


and they come unstuck

by Azzandra



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ableism, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic My Unit | Byleth, Featuring Big Sis Byleth, Found Family, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Runaway Sylvain, Sylvain Gets Himself Adopted by a Better Dad, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, now also featuring Felix and Rodrigue in: A Goofy Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:55:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21735658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: At seventeen, Sylvain finally screwed up the courage to leave home.And he fell in with a mercenary company.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius, Sylvain Jose Gautier & Jeralt Reus Eisner, Sylvain Jose Gautier & My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 309
Kudos: 908





	1. Using the wrong formula and still getting the right answer

At seventeen, Sylvain finally screwed up the courage to leave home.

And, as such things always went, it seemed like a great idea as he was riding away from Gautier with any supplies he could fit in his saddlebags, all the coin he could get away with, and a half-assed plan about what to do once he was far away enough that nobody knew his face. 

A kind of euphoria carried him through his first few weeks on the road, tinged with a sour desperation. He swung wildly between paranoia about being recognized (found, scolded, dragged back by his ears, thrown back in the gilded cage), and unfettered enjoyment of his new-found freedom, all the more manic for the feeling that it would be yanked away from him at any moment.

He didn't really sober up from his dark glee until some doxy he took up with at an inn stole all his money. The innkeeper threw him out on his rear, and took his horse as payment for the bill that Sylvain had supposedly incurred. Indignation rose to Sylvain's throat like bile as he rose from the dirt of the road, and he had the name 'Gautier' halfway off his tongue before he choked it off. And just like bile, it burned all the way down as he swallowed it back.

So instead, Sylvain picked up his saddlebag that the innkeeper had been kind enough to let him keep, and his sword--because like hell was he going to take a lance when running away from home--and decided it was time to act like a responsible, inconspicuous commoner, and get a job.

* * *

Sylvain thought it was going to be a lot harder than this, if he was honest.

It was just, hey, how hard could it be to get a job as mercenary? Commoners did it all the time, and most commoners didn't benefit from the thorough training and combat instructors Sylvain had been subject to since he was old enough to heft a lance without tipping over. And he was a dab hand with a sword, too. It was just expected from a nobleman, even one without the kind of fixation on swordplay that Felix had (and when would he even get to see Felix again-- a niggling voice began, before he stopped that thought the way he would cut the head off a snake).

But the mercenary captain Sylvain had given his pitch to wasn't privy to Sylvain's full schooling, so Sylvain didn't completely begrudge that man's air of skepticism.

And as long as Jeralt was looking Sylvain over like that, it meant he was still considering it. Even if it seemed like his eyes bored into Sylvain like a hot poker, and sifted through the ashes looking for embers. Sylvain just gave his best shit-eating grin in response, because he knew everybody got burned on him eventually, so if it was a fight Jeralt wanted to see in him, the old guy would see it.

"What's your name?" Jeralt asked.

"Jose," he replied smoothly, because it was the lie he'd used in this town, and he couldn't switch off now, standing in Jeralt's mercenary camp. The town was still too near for that. 

Jeralt snorted softly; maybe he didn't believe Sylvain, maybe he just found the name funny. 'You don't look like a Jose,' the doxy who'd stolen his money had said as she sat in his lap and poured him wine. But sure, he could say it was his name true enough, and it gave him a private laugh that anyone who thought they had their measure of him would be wrong. 

"Kid, come here," Jeralt called out, twisting away to aim it towards the far end of the camp.

Whoever Sylvain was expecting to come when called, it was not anyone looking like her. He didn't think mercenaries were even allowed to look like her. Sylvain gave an appreciate once-over, starting at the gorgeous legs clad in lacy tights, skimming over that tantalizing flash of her stomach, up over her ample chest, and finally settling on her face, and the large blue eyes that peered at him. Sylvain was starting to think that Jeralt ran a completely different operation than he initially assumed, but hell if he was complaining.

He grinned at her, too, though with a very different quality than he'd reserved for Jeralt. Alas, she didn't seem to appreciate it any more than Jeralt did; her face was completely neutral, almost unnaturally so. It threw Sylvain off to not garner any kind of reaction from a woman, even if it was a negative one. 

"Alright, Jose, let's see what you can do," Jeralt said, and nodded at the pretty mercenary.

"Aw, you're just gonna make me ruffle up a girl this pretty?" Sylvain said, not taking his eyes off her as she unsheathed her sword. If Jeralt was hoping that Sylvain would find the sight of a woman so distracting that he wouldn't be able to handle his sword right, the old man was gravely mistaken.

Still, Sylvain managed to be caught flat-footed by the ferocity with which she came at him. He'd barely had time to square off before he was parrying off a flurry of strikes, testing him for any opening with a strength that belied her small size. He found himself sobering up quickly in the face of this assault, and with every inch of ground he lost, the blankness of her expression seemed all the more taunting. Did she even take him seriously? Shit, was Jeralt having a laugh at him right now? Was this some kind of kink, seeing young bucks getting stomped into the dirt by a vixen in lacy tights?

Well, he wasn't quite stomped, but Sylvain did end up flat on his ass, panting heavily and easily disarmed, with the woman still devoid of any expression as the tip of her sword came up under his chin.

"That's enough," Jeralt called her off.

She nodded and sheathed her weapon, wandering off back towards camp without giving Sylvain a backwards glance. 

Jeralt, with a lopsided grin on his face, offered Sylvain his hand, and Sylvain took it as graciously as he could under the circumstances.

"You did alright," Jeralt said.

"I got crushed," Sylvain said.

"Yeah, you were always gonna get crushed," Jeralt said. "Just wanted to see how much of a fight you'd put up."

Sylvain rubbed the back of his neck where sweat was tickling past his collar, and gave a self-deprecating little huff.

"And?" Sylvain asked, grinning at Jeralt and ready to take rejection with a joke and a smile.

But Jeralt shrugged--the motion moving his massive shoulders like an earthquake rolling a mountain--and gestured towards the camp.

"Welcome to the business, kid. We're going to make a mercenary out of you yet."

* * *

Sylvain swaggered into the tight circle of mercenaries gathered around the campsite like he belonged there. There was always a risk of walking into a viper's pit when joining a new group, and if that was the case, Sylvain was ready to show fangs too. But there was no point alienating the people who would be watching his back from now on.

He noticed the pretty girl who'd kicked his ass wasn't there. The handful of mercenaries around the fire--sharpening swords, watching the meat skewered over the fire, one of them rolling up a cigarette--were all men, so Sylvain skipped right to male bonding as his opening strategy.

"Oh man," he laughed, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder towards the circle of trees where he'd just been tested, "does everyone who joins this outfit have to get his ass kicked by the captain's hot piece first?"

The mercenaries exchanged glances between them. They knew something Sylvain didn't, and now he felt sweat trickling down his back again. His grin remained fixed.

"Hope Jeralt didn't hear you talk that way," one of the mercenaries said, not even looking up from where he was cleaning under his nails with a dagger.

"Why not?" Sylvain asked, his curiosity genuine.

"That was his daughter what kicked you into the dirt," another one put in--the one sharpening his sword in long, slow strokes of the whetstone. He had a sad face, but that seemed more like the general construction of his face, not any deep sentiment.

Sylvain sputtered, turning his head as though Jeralt might appear at that very moment to skewer him with a pitchfork.

"But they look nothing alike!" Sylvain hissed, and the mercenaries laughed, because they guessed Sylvain did say something untoward about her to Jeralt, and now they were enjoying his misery.

Well, that was one way to play at their sympathies.

"We don't know nothing about that," the first mercenary said, smiling as he continued to clean his nails. He didn't even look up. "Jeralt says she takes after her mother. But maybe she's a foundling he took in."

"Most places," the second man said, "they drown children what look like that. Blank faces. Empty souls. Either don't look you in the eye, or stare right through you."

"Changelings," another said with an air of agreement. 

Sylvain had heard about this superstition in some remote villages, where children who seemed touched in the head were drowned. He'd just never expected to hear it spoken of openly. He would have thought an inclination towards infanticide was the kind of thing people just didn't bring up in polite conversation, but he was learning something new about the common folk of Fodlan with every passing day.

He didn't try to grin his way through this. He was so repulsed, he knew it would just look unnatural.

"Brave man, to raise a changeling," the man sharpening the sword said. He spoke in between the hiss-and-snickt of his whetstone, plying himself to the rhythm of it like hypnotized. "Paid off in the end, I suppose. Now he's got a demon at his beck."

"She didn't seem that bad," Sylvain put in, and this didn't exactly garner him disapproval from the assembled mercenaries, but they had an air like they knew better and he would learn otherwise soon.

"Haven't seen her on a real battlefield yet," the man said, shaking his head. Then, after another slide of his whetstone, added in an ominous undertone, "Ashen Demon."

* * *

Sylvain did what he always did, and charmed his way into the bosom of the mercenary company as easily as he might charm his way under the skirts of a village girl. People all had their little levers, baked into their personalities, and if you knew which ones to pull, you'd get the result you wanted.

With the rank-and-file of Jeralt's mercenary company, Sylvain was the new guy, and slotted himself into their expectations religiously: young, a little goofy, prime victim for hazing. He accepted all the worst chores with only perfunctory complaining, and in the evenings, he told stories of his own foibles with women. Not necessarily stories of conquest--though most of the mercenaries were men, there were quite a few stony-faced women among them--but they were always pleased to hear him tell of how any of his entanglements with women ended up blowing in his face. 

They could all tell he was handsome, after all; youthful, and tall, and with a full set of teeth. That kind of thing could breed jealousy and spite. But hearing stories of how Sylvain had a jug of milk thrown at him by an angry milkmaid, or how an incensed father had nearly bludgeoned him for whistling at one of his daughters--well, they could all smirk and think to themselves that they would have handled the situation better than silly Jose.

Winning over Jeralt was even easier than that. The captain appreciated hard work and reliability. And Sylvain might have joked around and played stupid with the rest of the mercenaries, but if Jeralt said jump, Sylvain made sure he was already in the air before asking how high. He couldn't afford getting kicked out of the company, and his position had started out a precarious one.

There were, of course, those in the company Sylvain knew he was never going to get along with, the typical clash of personalities too different and too incompatible for anything other than grudging tolerance.

But Sylvain at least knew where he stood with people, even when they hated him.

He was completely at a loss when it came to Byleth.

It wasn't as though she spent much time with the rest of the mercenaries, either. Sylvain could hardly blame her, considering the things they said about her. But it didn't seem like it was out of any resentment towards them.

In fact, on the battlefield, it was not unusual for Byleth to jump in and intercept blows, or interpose herself between any injured mercenary and their foe. She and Jeralt were good--in fact, they could give anyone in any given fight a run for their money--but while Jeralt snapped off orders and handled tactics, Byleth always already seemed to know what had to be done, and move without Jeralt having to tell her where. It was an almost eerie experience, to witness father and daughter share the same unspoken thought-space, like they were reading the exact same lines in a book. Whatever resemblance Sylvain couldn't pinpoint in their physical appearance, he saw in the way they fought, even when they were at opposite ends of a battlefield.

Not that Sylvain had a lot of time to spend observing them. He did not have the advantage of a horse, or the distance of a lance between himself and enemy. He had a sword, and a set of armor that was not sub-par, but certainly not anything he would have been permitted to wear as a pampered son of nobility.

He stuck close to Jeralt, and took his orders like a good boy, and hoped he wasn't going to screw up too badly before he had a chance to prove himself.

* * *

Even so, panic fluttered in Sylvain's chest when Jeralt called him over one evening. They'd spent the day rousting a den of bandits from a mountain pass at the behest of a merchant, and despite the fight turning out bloodier than estimated, nobody on their side had died, and by mercenary standards, that was success. Three dozen well-armed mercenaries, pitted against two dozen bandits with terrain advantage; it was the traps and tripwires that had claimed more casualties, rather than the dull iron of the brigands.

Jeralt had seemed lukewarmly pleased with the way the conflict panned out. He'd given a tongue-lashing to those in the company who had recklessly trundled ahead and straight into traps, but if the lesson sank in, it would be because of the injuries they'd incurred.

But Sylvain thought he'd done fine throughout the conflict, so he did not know what to expect when Jeralt raised his hand to beckon him over. Sylvain had his grin affixed, his gait loose-limbed and careless; so what if he was going to get scolded. He didn't have anything to live up to, no expectations; he was just poor dumb Jose here. Jose couldn't bring shame to a family name he didn't have in the first place.

Jeralt's face was impassive when he looked Sylvain over. Not blank, like his daughter, but stony like a cliff that that nothing but water and centuries could carve into.

"You get yourself checked out by the healers?" Jeralt asked as preamble.

"Naw, I'm fine, just sore," Sylvain shrugged carelessly. "I can take way more of a beating than that, captain."

"Hrm." Jeralt looked him up and down, evidently not trusting Sylvain's medical expertise, but Sylvain really wasn't lying. He'd gotten through the fighting with scrapes and bruises. "You got the one with the axe that was heading for me."

Sylvain's eyebrows went up, because he remembered. He didn't think Jeralt had noticed, but then, evidently, there was no reason to think he hadn't. Jeralt noticed everything on a battlefield, like he had a bird's eye view of it. 

"Yeah?" Sylvain said, not sure what trap this would spring. He scratched his arm, trying to look casual, but he had to physically stop himself from squirming.

Jeralt snorted, and it was clear he'd picked up on how Sylvain was moments away from trying to weasel out of this conversation. He reached to settle a hand over the back of Sylvain's neck, holding him like a pup by the scruff. It wasn't a tight hold, or painful in any way. Jeralt's hand was calloused and dry, and the touch itself was just a solid weight meant to keep Sylvain in place. 

So Sylvain tried not to stiffen, and when Jeralt pressed a thumb against the back of his head to tilt Sylvain's head towards him, Sylvain gave the old man all of his attention.

"You didn't have to do that," Jeralt said slowly. "I could have handled him easily, and you left yourself open trying to protect me. Could have gotten yourself killed if there'd been another man coming around the building, and you were damn lucky there wasn't."

"Yes, sir," Sylvain replied reflexively, like Jeralt was one of the knight-instructors he was used to. 

But Jeralt didn't snap corrections. Instead he snorted, and released Sylvain's scruff to ruffle his hair instead. Jeralt's hand was heavy and warm, and the gesture was what Sylvain imagined other people with better fathers would describe as paternal. 

"Just watch yourself, kid," Jeralt said. "Don't get hurt on my behalf. It's my job to look out for you."

"Aw, come on, sir, I won't be the new guy forever," Sylvain said, grinning with newfound confidence. "Have some faith in me."

"Goddess help me," Jeralt grumbled, "but a death wish isn't going to endear you to me, so you cut that shit out real quick."

Sylvain laughed in response, but it felt like a warm bubble was growing in his chest.

"No idea what you're talking about, sir," he said, shrugging.

Jeralt dismissed him, and Sylvain went to loiter by the fire, watching as Jeralt called other members of the company over to have quiet talks with them about their performances. He couldn't hear the conversations themselves, as likely nobody had overheard his, but Sylvain watched as Jeralt dispensed advice and friendly shoulder pats.

And there he was, thinking again about how different Byleth and Jeralt were.

* * *

Sylvain had gotten used to the simple life on the road. The hard tack was tolerable, especially when they had forage and hunting to supplement it with. And, of course, the fishing.

As far as Sylvain could tell, if there was ever fish cooking over the camp fire, it was because Jeralt or Byleth had gone fishing--together or alternately.

He didn't really understand the appeal of fishing on its own; it seemed like a whole bunch of sitting around to him. But he spotted Byleth with a fishing rod as she headed out of camp one morning, and he thought, what the hell. Might as well see what all the fuss was about, right? Not like they were doing anything else that day, and he knew Jeralt would be down in the nearby village, hashing out details for a job.

He walked towards the nearby lake as casually as he could, hands in his pockets, giving no indication that he was following Byleth. In fact, when he emerged from the trees and reached the shoreline, it was quite a walk away from where Byleth had set herself to fishing.

The nearby village must have built the small pier specifically for fishing; there was a boat moored there, bobbing placidly on the water. Byleth sat on the far end of the pier, her legs dangling over the water as she held the fishing rod. If this was fun for her, Sylvain sure couldn't tell, partly because of the distance, but mostly because she looked as expressionless as ever.

He could leave well enough alone. Pretend he just came out here to stretch his legs, and not bother her. Goddess knew there were plenty of other girls out in the world, all of them plenty more deserving of being bothered by him.

Nonetheless, he rounded the shore and walked the short length of the pier, and without a greeting or an invitation, he plopped himself down next to Byleth.

"Are they biting?" Sylvain asked, giving her a grin.

Byleth's eyes cut to him, cold and assessing, but there was no malice in it. She shrugged--which, if meant to be an answer to his question, Sylvain wasn't sure how to interpret--and then looked back out over the water.

But Sylvain could outrun a lot of things, just not the reflex to try his luck anyway. Without a Crest to flaunt, without a name to fall back on, he still couldn't squelch the instinct to measure just how much affection he could get for the promise of a little material security. He wasn't under any delusions; the town girls who liked to hang on him were drawn by the flash of his coin just as much as his charm, and he thought he could calculate down to the copper how much they'd put up with in exchange. He wondered where Byleth would fall on that spectrum, if anywhere at all. Maybe this would all end with him getting thrown on his ass out of the company, but that was how he got accepted into it in the first place, so it would just be a closed circle. He would move on to the next thing.

"Guess I'm the only one you reeled in so far, huh?" Sylvain asked, swinging his feet over the water. "Not a complete loss, I am a great catch." Not that she would know. Nobody in Jeralt's company knew, and they were deep enough in Empire territory that any news of a missing Gautier heir would be slow to reach. 

The flirtation seemed to roll off Byleth's back at first, but then, just as Sylvain was winding himself up for another pass, compelled to get any kind of reaction, she reached out and put her hand over his knee.

Sylvain froze in place. 

"You're scaring the fish," Byleth said evenly.

"...What?" Sylvain blinked.

"With your legs. When you swing them," Byleth clarified.

Now that he noticed, his legs were longer than Byleth's, and as they hung over the edge of the pier, the soles of his boots just barely skimmed the water. He'd been unconsciously swinging his legs, sending droplets flying. He'd stopped at her touch, however, the gentle correction flustering Sylvain more than he expected. 

Byleth removed her hand and shifted her attention back to the task at hand.

Sylvain stayed quiet for a while, trying to collect himself.

"Are there even any fish in this lake?" he asked.

"I don't know," Byleth said.

"Uh. Then... why are you here?" 

Byleth didn't answer out loud. She shrugged again.

But then, where else would she be? In camp, where people fell into uneasy silence around her, and the eyes of the other mercenaries tracked her movements like uneasy rabbits in the underbrush tracking the flight of raptors overhead? They'd made a demon out of her in their own heads, so now they lived with that fear in their chests.

And Sylvain was here, because he had a different kind of demon in his head.

They stayed in silence for a long time, or maybe not long at all, and after a while, having grown restless, he reached out to touch Byleth's knee in turn. He traced fingers over the pattern of her lace, the motion idle. Just something to do with his hand. She didn't even react to it. Maybe she didn't feel it was warranted. 

Except for when he traced the stylized whorl of a flower-stem up to her mid-thigh.

That was as far as he got before Byleth looked down at his hand with the tiniest frown on her face, just a faint line between her brows. She took his hand and moved it back down her leg, flattening it against her knee and then patting it kindly, like he was a small child she was allowing to play with her lace as long as he behaved.

"Aw, come on," he goaded with a grin. "I bet we could find something a bit more fun to do." His fingers curled over the curve of her kneecap.

"If you're bored, I can teach you to fish," Byleth offered.

"What makes you think I don't know how to fish already?"

"Even if you do, strategically, you shouldn't admit it," Byleth replied, looking him right in the eye with her unblinking stare, "because pretending otherwise would give you both the pretext to continue spending time with me, and more opportunities to press your advantage."

Sylvain's jaw opened and hung slack for probably longer than was dignified, but eventually he picked it off the ground and adjusted some of his presumptions. And he'd thought she was such an innocent girl, too.

"Is everything tactics with you?" he asked, aiming for joking and overshooting into nervous.

"Tactics are useful when you have an objective to achieve. You came here with an objective, didn't you?"

He'd always just assumed Byleth was around his age, but for a second there, Sylvain felt just like he had after he hit on Ingrid's grandmother the one time, and the old lady packed him off with criticism so mild in its delivery, that he didn't feel the sting of it until days later when he thought her words over. 

"You make it sound so adversarial," Sylvain laughed, changing tack. "If you're up for it, why not just say so? We could be having a nice time together."

"Because I'm not interested," Byleth replied.

"Then why give me advice about-- flirting-- tactics-- or whatever?" Sylvain asked, his brows pulling together in confusion.

"Why pick up a sword, if you're not going to kill an enemy? Because sometimes you're just sparring for practice," Byleth said. "Running through the drills is what keeps you in fighting shape."

"Sounds like you were just going to let me dangle on your line knowing full well you weren't going to take me up on the offer," Sylvain retorted. "That's kind of mean, isn't it? I wouldn't have taken you for a tease."

"Then you know your training goals," Byleth said solemnly, "to become better at telling if a woman is genuinely interested in you."

Sylvain was speechless for a good minute. He couldn't tell if she was joking. He was pretty good at telling--he'd been slapped in the face enough times to know when a woman was definitely not interested. But it was hardly his fault that so many could be swayed by a Crest, a title, a promise of a comfortable life, or honeyed words from a poisonous tongue. 

She could play aloof now, but would she act differently towards him if he knew who he truly was?

He couldn't imagine her fluttering her eyelashes at him. The image felt so out of character, that his mind revolted against it. 

But maybe she was being truthful enough, and this was her way of telling him to fuck off. And hey, he could hardly blame her. He was some nobody, intruding on the quiet time she wanted to spend away from everyone.

He sighed, rubbed the back of his neck.

"I'm sorry for bothering you," he said, and made to rise.

"You're not bothering me," she said. "Sit."

"But-- Are you sure?" He froze awkwardly, one foot up, the other still dangling over the lake; half in and half out. He should retreat no matter what she said, because now he felt he was at a tactical disadvantage, and that was probably the right call. But he didn't know what anything meant with her, and when it came down to it, he didn't know if he wanted to leave at all.

"If you were bothering me, I'd tell you to your face." 

The bluntness of the statement startled a laugh out of Sylvain.

"Okay," he said, settling himself back on the edge of the pier. "Yeah. Okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jeralt: *makes harmless physical contact*  
> Sylvain: are you my dad now


	2. Dysfunction is only charming in moderation

If there was something to be said for life on the road, it was that it did not require them to linger anywhere for too long. They traveled along old Imperial highways, took an arching eastwards path, and backtracked at least a couple of times to pick up jobs from local landholders as they did. If Jeralt planned to take a circling tour of Fodlan, then Sylvain planned to stick around just as long as they never ended up in Gautier.

The longer time spent on the road, the more Sylvain began to identify a core to Jeralt's company. Some of the mercenaries were jobbers taking short-term contracts to make a bit of money in-between whatever else they had going on. They peeled off the group and went off, and by the next fortnight, Jeralt already replaced them with some other steely-eyed strangers who weren't going to stick around for long.

The core of the company, however, was made up of the more permanent members. Byleth was a fixture, naturally, but the rest of the permanent ensemble included a peculiar mix of the mercenaries in the company who were most tolerant of Byleth's peculiarities, and most superstitious of her, with the commonality that, whatever their opinion, none of them brought it up to Jeralt's face. Some of the core group were old, scarred veterans who had nothing in their lives but a sword and a very non-transferable skillset. Others were younger, and full of verve, and personally loyal to Jeralt.

Sylvain, if pressed, would have firmly put himself in the first category. He was going to leave the company eventually, and he had no doubt it would be abrupt and without warning. The alternative was staying long enough to get found out, and Sylvain was not about to subject himself to that.

But the truth of the matter, that Sylvain realized all too late, was that the longer he stayed with Jeralt's mercenaries, the more he found himself inching into the second group. The transient mercenaries hung around for days, weeks, rarely months. Sylvain had found himself lingering long enough that, if he was temporary, he was the one who'd stuck around the longest out of all of them. Tentatively, he may well have been the newest of the core group by this point.

That was probably a bad call on his part, but it wasn't as though there was anywhere else he planned to be. Jeralt had spent the rainy autumn in the Empire, and may well have spent the rest of winter in the balmy south, but a lot of other mercenary companies were thinking the same thing. There was starting to be competition over contracts. If Jeralt had planned to go seeking employment in Faerghus, Sylvain would have been out in a hot minute. But the plan was to wend up into Leicester territory, heading east towards Derdriu. There was always work in Leicester, where the nobles were constantly jockeying for power. And Almyra was unlikely to invade in the winter, but if the spring thaw came early the next year, it might pay to be close at hand.

So Sylvain found himself occupying a strange place in the pecking order several months in: not quite new enough to be the newbie, not quite old enough to be given impromptu field command; but since he had a strong back and was uninclined towards larceny, he was trusted enough to accompany Jeralt on supply runs, or contract negotiations. Not that Sylvain's job was anything more than standing in the back with his hand on his sword-hilt, looming quietly to give Jeralt more weight in his negotiations. He was usually given this task when Byleth was not available.

Now seeing himself burdened with Sylvain for the foreseeable future, Jeralt began taking more of an interest in him. He prodded Sylvain into training more consistently--and getting knocked into the dirt by the old man was not remotely any less humiliating than getting his ass kicked by Byleth. Both took their turns with him fairly consistently.

In fact, one morning, Jeralt had taken Sylvain aside to put him through his paces in the lull between jobs. Sylvain went through his warm-up and basic drills thinking it was going to be just as ordinary as any other training session, except Jeralt was looking at Sylvain with a speculative look in his eyes that day. Instead of moving onto sparring, Jeralt looked Sylvain up and down.

"You're alright with a sword," Jeralt said, and Sylvain snorted softly, more because he was irrepressively irreverent than out of any disagreement, "but we should get you training on some other things. Maybe a lance--"

"No," Sylvain blurted out, and Jeralt pulled up short at this reaction. "I mean, lance isn't really my style," Sylvain amended with a chuckle. It came out tenser than intended, and he didn't think he'd played it off very well, but Jeralt shrugged.

"Alright," Jeralt said, and threw Sylvain an axe. "We'll try you out on some other things."

Eventually, they would compromise on a halberd.

* * *

Having slotted himself into the company, Sylvain discovered not only that he had adjusted to the foibles of his companions, but that they had adjusted to his. The first time they made room for him next to the fire, or handed him a bowl of his favorite flavor of gruel, it struck Sylvain how comfortable everybody was with him, to an extent that commoners usually weren't. But he was one of them here, now, and the easy camaraderie was strange to him when it was with nominal strangers such as these mercenaries.

If they thought anything was off about Sylvain spending time with Byleth willingly, they didn't say anything about it to him, though on occasion they would give him looks or shakes of the head that were perhaps meant to convey some kind of message.

The truth was, he didn't think Byleth was all that bad. Maybe the rest of the mercenaries were scared of her, but Sylvain was the youngest in the company, and that made Byleth closest in age to him. Oh, he'd definitely lied about his age to everyone, and the fact that he was naturally tall and broad-shouldered helped sell his story that he was twenty years old, but he realized a bit belatedly that he had gotten used to much younger companions than he kept now; all his childhood friends had been younger than him, only by a couple of years or so, but enough to get him used to being the mature one.

He certainly didn't feel mature in this crowd. The first time he had suggested to someone they go into town and find girls, the mercenary had turned to him and launched into an overly-detailed story about a prostitute and-- well, suffice to say that was a lot cruder a conversation than Sylvain was used to. Usually, he was the one offending other people's sensibilities, but he was learning rapidly that the nobility was just exceedingly prudish.

Byleth, for her part, might have been assumed prudish for the fact that she did not display any overt interest in anything remotely sexual, but Sylvain spent a few weeks speculating that maybe she was just not interested in men. 

When Sylvain's skin itched with restlessness, and he began craving bad decisions again, he asked her if she wanted to go into town to pick up girls.

"Okay," she had replied, and though she didn't display any enthusiasm at the notion, she accepted so easily that it threw Sylvain for a loop.

"Okay," he'd echoed dumbly, before gathering himself and grinning at her.

That trip into town turned out to be... something. They started out at the tavern, and even though Sylvain matched Byleth drink for drink, it didn't seem like she was getting any drunker.

By the point he realized how unaffected she was, Sylvain was far enough into his cups to start questioning whether she might have actually been a demon. But he was still not too drunk for some flirting, and the alcohol made him feel looser than usual, but the restlessness that had driven him to this outing had now turned into something mean and sharp at the edges.

He found himself playing with a lock of blond hair and whispering filth into the ear of the giggling serving girl that came at the end of it, and he was just drunk enough to not even pay attention to what he was saying, but it was all just rote. He'd done this before. He knew the drill, and he was calculating angles of approach as he traced the shape of her neck and thought about kissing along her jaw and the exact sounds that would elicit.

Byleth, sitting across the table, leaned forward and pushed a handful of coins towards the serving girl.

"We'll be settling out tab for the night," Byleth said, sounding not even a bit angry or bothered, but looking so blank that the serving girl was free to project anything onto that emotional void. Whatever she imagined Byleth was feeling, it made the serving girl's giggles die off abruptly. She took the money and left.

Sylvain felt her absence more like a rush of cold air against his side, and he looked towards Byleth with wordless annoyance.

"If you don't want to sleep with a girl, you don't have to do it," Byleth told in in response. "You prove nothing by going through with something you won't even enjoy."

Sylvain opened his mouth to argue, to rebuke her, to contradict her assumptions--

He finished off his drink instead. 

* * *

But a habit was a hard thing to break. 

He didn't know what he was trying to prove anymore. Before, he could balm his conscience by telling himself that the girls were selfish social climbers only interested in his Crest and status. But what did it prove, when they saw nothing in him save for a commoner and a mercenary, a young man who winked and flirted and acted by all accounts as though he was nothing more than he appeared?

That he was a cad and a liar, probably. That he had always been so, and had only been deluding himself by pretending all those girls he'd wrapped around his finger were somehow worse. All this time, it had been him. They'd been right about every single thing a slighter girl had ever yelled at him.

So for a while, carried by the inertia of his own self-loathing, he persisted. He smiled. He flirted. He tumbled naive village girls in haylofts, and didn't face any consequences because while he was running from angry fathers, Jeralt was also picking up the company and moving out of town to outrun unpaid tavern tabs.

Sylvain didn't know if Jeralt had noticed, or if he had but didn't care, but then, one day, Jeralt came upon Sylvain drawing water from a well for a village girl with doe eyes and a shy smile.

"There we go," Sylvain said as he tipped the well-bucket and filled the girl's water pail. She gave him a lopsided smile in response, and opened her mouth to say something, but for Jeralt's sudden appearance. She looked at the large man with his forbidding face and mountainous height, and scurried off like a mouse into the underbrush.

"Could use a drink myself," Jeralt said, eying Sylvain, and Sylvain took the hint, lowering the bucket back into the well. "Kid, you know what a pitchfork wedding is?"

Sylvain, in the process of turning the wheel, gave Jeralt a confused look.

"Uh..."

"It's when a man with a pitchfork gives you a choice," Jeralt explained, "between marrying his daughter or getting skewered through."

This filled Sylvain with a vague sense of alarm, but he still didn't know where this was heading, so he just turned the wheel, listening to the splashing water as the well-bucket dangled and overspilled.

"Come on, the Church doesn't allow that kinda thing," Sylvain laughed.

"Church thinks it's distasteful," Jeralt said, "but the Church isn't present for the wedding, the village priest is. If their neighbor comes over and says, 'this man has disgraced my daughter, and now wants to leave her without taking responsibility for his actions', what do you think the priest is going to say?"

Sylvain pulled the bucket up on the rim of the well, and Jeralt picked up the tin cup tied with a chain to it, filling it with water from the bucket. He drank as deeply as Sylvain had seen him drink a tankard of ale, in great gulps and with a satisfied sigh at the end.

"Ah, that hits the spot," Jeralt said, wiping his mouth. "Just think about what I said."

Sylvain nodded dumbly, and he simply stood there, watching as Jeralt walked off.

If that had been advice or a warning, Sylvain still wasn't sure. But maybe if Jeralt had come up and said, outright, 'I see you messing with girls in every town we stop in, and you better knock it off', Sylvain would have disobeyed just to be contrary.

He didn't know what to do with this vague sense of dread Jeralt had just implanted in him.

* * *

"Do you want to go into town?" Byleth asked him the next time they stopped near to one.

Sylvain, in the process of trying to mend a hole in one of his shirts, would have gleefully flung the garment as far away as possible and followed her had he not been down to his last intact shirt and in the desperate process of trying to recover this one.

"Nah, it's fine," he replied instead. "Have fun without me."

Byleth paused for a moment, and he looked up to see a slight frown pulling at the corners of her mouth.

"I don't really know anything about that," she replied, and sat down in the grass next to him.

"You don't know how to... have fun?" Sylvain asked, incredulous.

"You don't know how to _sew_ ," Byleth pointed out. "I wouldn't judge."

Sylvain snorted at that, because it was the nearest he'd seen Byleth get to being annoyed. But now that he thought about it, he couldn't think of what she might do for fun. There were certainly activities Sylvain guessed she enjoyed, like fishing, or training (constantly training, with a dedication that overspilled expectations onto Sylvain to catch up with her), but that was a different thing from actually having fun.

Even all the times they headed into town together, her drinking was perfunctory and her flirting was nonexistent. Given the choice of activities, she would sometimes browse wares at market, but never buy anything. The only indulgence she had was eating truly massive amounts of food whenever they hit up a tavern.

Sylvain had an inkling that he should have found her strange neutrality eerie, but sometimes, her single-minded dedication to combat training just reminded him of Felix instead, and made something twist in his chest.

No, focusing back to the matter at hand, he snapped off the thread, packed up the sewing supplies, and folded up his shirt.

"On the other hand, maybe I'll just buy a new shirt," Sylvain said. "Let's go."

Byleth gave him a look, in that way she was capable of giving them without her face actually moving, but Sylvain was already cheerfully jumping to his feet and offering his hand to help her up as well.

The town itself turned out to be scarce on anything Sylvain might have classified as a recreational activity, but there was, incidentally, a travelling merchant who'd just set up a stall, and by the time they came back to camp, the bundle under Sylvain's arm contained not only a shirt, but a small, wooden box.

"Is chess fun?" Byleth had asked of the purchase.

"It's not everyone's idea of fun," Sylvain allowed, "but let's start with baby steps, okay?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I wasn't sure about continuing, but maybe I'll just get ideas for this story intermittently.


	3. where did that other dog come from; who is he

"I had another dream," Byleth announced one morning at breakfast.

Or--not announced, because her voice was as flat and quiet as it always was when she was off a battlefield, and the only ones present were Jeralt, who was looking into a mug of weak tea with a disgruntled mien, not quite ready to drink it yet, and Sylvain, who was trying to figure out the best way of chewing on a dry biscuit without breaking his teeth.

Byleth took the campaign chair next to Sylvain after that, settling into the natural course of breakfast as Sylvain passed her one of the hard tack biscuits.

Jeralt looked up from his mug, trying not to appear concerned. But Byleth didn't inherit the blankness of her expression from her father, so Sylvain caught the wary twitch in Jeralt's face; the caution that made Sylvain curious.

"Was it a nightmare?" Sylvain asked, wondering why a dream would be notable. His inquiry was light, merely the concern of a friend in another's well-being, and he made it sound disinterested enough that Jeralt did not get a suspicious cast to his face.

Byleth considered for a moment.

"No," she replied.

"Was it strange?" Sylvain continued.

"I don't know."

"You don't remember it?"

"I remember it," she said. "I don't usually dream." Then, after a moment's hesitation, "It was the same one as before."

Sylvain had missed some previous loop of conversation between Byleth and Jeralt, evidently, because Jeralt understood something in Byleth's words that Sylvain did not.

"You shouldn't worry about it," Jeralt said. "People dream weird shit sometimes."

Jeralt finally came to a decision about the tea, and he rose from his seat to pass the mug from his hands to Byleth's, who never seemed to have particularly strong feelings about any food or drink, and thus consumed it all indiscriminately. Sylvain had often witnessed in wonder how the only axis along which Byleth seemed to care about food was volume, and Jeralt, ever the indulgent father, would never hesitate to spoon seconds or thirds into Byleth's plate.

This time, if there was a purpose to giving her that mug of weak and probably already cold tea, it was to put a cap on the conversation. Byleth dunked her biscuit in the tea, tried biting into it, dunked it back into the mug for a longer soak.

But Jeralt's attention was on Sylvain now, a narrow-eyed gaze that cut through the younger man to deliver a warning.

Sylvain, always aware that his membership in the mercenary company was conditional, kept quiet and decided to leave matters lie.

* * *

Sylvain came back from town one day--and they always called it going 'into town' even when it was more a village to speak of--and discovered Jeralt had added another to their numbers. A boy, so lanky that a stiff breeze could probably make him wobble like a switch in the wind, was picking himself off the ground and brushing off his patchy clothing with a sour look on his face. Byleth was sheathing her sword with professional detachment. It wasn't hard to guess how that bout had gone.

"How old're you?" Jeralt asked the boy.

"Nineteen," came the answer, out of a face that Sylvain would have rather given fourteen to. 

Sylvain's snort must have come out a bit loud, because the boy--face so smooth he hadn't even grown in peach fuzz--sent a glare his way.

"Fine," Jeralt said.

The boy didn't quite light up, but his back stiffened and straightened, and he picked up his weapon off the ground. It was a modified scythe, the blade of it turned upwards so it formed a rudimentary hooked spear instead. It was little more than peasant weaponry, that made Sylvain feel ridiculous for the sword he had first arrived carrying.

"C'n I get m'stuff?" the boy mumbled, his eyes darting to the village and then back to Jeralt again.

"Get whatever you need," Jeralt said. "We leave tomorrow morning. If you're here by then, you can come along. And if you decide you don't want to, it's no skin off my back."

"I'll be back'n a bit," the boy mumbled again, like his mouth was full of dumplings. 

After he scurried off, Sylvain gave Jeralt a look.

"Nineteen?" Sylvain repeated.

"Could be," Jeralt said, his shoulder rolling in a long shrug. "Believe it or not, Jose, not every boy gets to grow up with enough steady meals to start shaving at fifteen. Sometimes village boys need a few more years to round out."

Sylvain felt the prickle of embarrassment down the back of his neck, for all the things he hadn't considered. For all Jeralt knew, Sylvain had been a village boy too, but now Sylvain wondered how much benefit of a doubt he had been given.

And then, because there was still a petty part of Sylvain that liked twisting things around, he wondered who'd been giving Jeralt steady meals when he was growing up, and more to the point, who'd given Jeralt training as a knight, because the first time Sylvain had seen Jeralt ride into battle, he revealed himself for it.

Was Eisner even his real last name? Or was that as much a fabrication as 'Jose'?

"What if he's not just waiting to fill out?" Sylvain persisted, back to the subject. "What if you figure out he's lying?"

"Took you in, didn't I?" Jeralt muttered.

A swell of panic had Sylvain's tongue feeling too heavy in his mouth, and so he managed to stay silent for entirely too long. Long enough that Jeralt noticed, and raised an eyebrow.

"But I'm actually twenty," Sylvain protested, a bit too quickly after how long he paused.

"Still?" Jeralt asked mildly. "Would have thought you'd had a birthday by now."

Sylvain, quite wisely, let the subject drop. No need for Jeralt to know Sylvain had left home right after his seventeenth birthday.

The village boy returned to the company with a sad little satchel of his belongings, and the wicked scythe on his shoulder. He returned that evening, and not in the morning, and he was still there when they broke camp and moved on.

In the end, Sylvain decided they were not the same at all, and if he ignored any similarity between the two of them, it was--like befriending Byleth--a very deliberate thing.

* * *

The new kid was named Petros. 

He sat around the campfire with the other mercenaries and laughed at the appropriate times, and took on whatever tasks the other mercenaries gave him without question, even when he was being given the run-around, but he was good-natured enough that he did not mind terribly when he discovered he had been tricked. Getting hazed was just the price of admission.

Sylvain was friendly to the kid, even welcoming. But Petros, eager to be one of the group, started giving Byleth the same wide berth the rest of the mercenaries did, and so Sylvain found himself being given the same berth by dint of his proximity to Byleth.

When Byleth wasn't around, Petros was still wary, but less given to keeping a distance. On the road, especially, when they walked along the carts, Jeralt had Petros shadow Sylvain, if only to learn what to keep their eyes open for on the road.

They were trudging along a dusty road, flat land extending in every direction, the fields burnt barren in some old conflict and not yet replanted. Sylvain pointed out the bridge ahead, and small though it was, instructed Petros to keep an eye out in case bandits had set an ambush under it. Not a concern for a group as large and well-armed as them, but Sylvain suspected any regular peasant would get shaken down for any copper bits in their pockets by even a single man with a good, solid tool for a weapon. 

Petros grunted in acknowledgment, taking in the information but not looking particularly thankful for it. Maybe he'd been at the wrong end of such an encounter, or someone he knew had been, and Sylvain was not imparting anything new or terribly insightful.

It was then that Byleth passed by, nodding to them as she walked up to the front of their meandering caravan, towards Jeralt in the leading cart.

Petros' jaw clenched as Byleth passed, but he didn't make gestures of warding or spit on the ground like some of the temporary jobbers did if they were superstitious or especially vicious.

"Jeralt should have you shadowing Byleth instead," Sylvain couldn't resist prodding. "Now there's someone you could learn from."

"Nah," Petros replied, "ain't muscling in on your turf, don't gotta worry."

Petros mumbled all his words so much, that it took Sylvain a second to parse the statement.

"What turf would you be muscling in on, exactly?" Sylvain asked, giving Petros a smile so sharp that the boy looked uneasy.

"Well. You know," he mumbled.

Sylvain resisted the urge to tell him--'no, I don't know, tell me and speak properly, open your mouth and e-nun-ci-ate', like the way Sylvain's tutors would scold him when he'd been young and barely learning to shape words, but instead he kept quiet and let Petros grope his way towards a full sentence all by his own steam.

"S'a good angle," Petros continued, eyes darting everywhere but at Sylvain. "If y'marry Jeralt's daughter you get the company when he dies, right?"

Sylvain was stunned silent by this notion, and Petros took this as a cue that he ought to continue making awful mouth noises in his direction.

"Ain't like anybody else's gonna have her, 'n it's not a bad idea. You'd have a good thing goin'. Worse ways'n that t' move up'n the world."

Petros looked to the ground now, and if he intended to add anything more to his incredible statements, the sound of it was lost somewhere between his mumbling mouth and the squeak of the nearby cart's wheels.

This was the first time Sylvain had ever found himself at the other end of being considered a social climber or a gold-digger, and the entire thing felt so inherently absurd, that he wondered if the Goddess herself sent Petros along as punishment for Sylvain's past infractions against the girls he dallied with.

"Kid," Sylvain said, slapping Petros on the back so hard that he rattled like a table with one leg too short, "you've got some wild notions about how the world works."

Petros didn't look like he believed it, but he shrugged off Sylvain's hand, and then shrugged again, emphatically enough that his skinny shoulders rose up to his ears.

"Like you know shit," Petros mumbled just loud enough for Sylvain to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no plot, but that's fine because I like these smaller episodic tidbits. Anyone want to see something in particular in this fic?


	4. Dead tree doesn't have a character limit

In charge of his own expenditures to an extent that his previous life had never permitted, Sylvain began to value his money the way a life of wealth could not have taught him.

Evidently, getting robbed of nearly all the money he'd taken when running away had been a setback, but so had a certain recklessness in his early days, when he thought all he would need was to scrape up enough coin to be on to the next adventure. Now, as his day to day concerns--food, weapons, armor, healing--were in Jeralt's interest to maintain, Sylvain still found himself burdened with the mundane aspects of life on the road. He had learned to sew adequately, to barter for a shaving kit or a blanket, to ration his alcohol carefully.

He knew where to hide his money now, that he wouldn't be robbed by the first pickpocket to cross his path, and perhaps most of all, he had learned when not to spend his money no matter how much he was tempted.

Which was to say the following: gift shopping had become a more complicated logistical puzzle now that his budget was limited.

It was already the beginning of Ethereal Moon when he realized, with a start, that this would be the first year he would not be sending gifts to his friends.

Oh, certainly, House Gautier would be sending gifts to the Crown Prince of Faerghus for his birthday, as would every noble house in Faerghus, and even a few from abroad. 

But he, Sylvain, specifically, would not be giving Dimitri a gift chosen for him out of friendship instead of obligation. The same would go for Ingrid, whose house did not have so many connection that she would be receiving many gifts from people who were not friends and family, and whose siblings were numerous enough that even family would not be able to afford to spoil her. As for Felix... well, he could snipe and sneer all he liked, but he was not so far removed from childhood that Sylvain had forgotten the hurt look and the trembling lip he would get when Glenn pretended to forget his birthday.

So, Sylvain did not see any alternative. He was going to have to do his best.

* * *

First things first. Dimitri's birthday gift.

Oh, certainly, Dimitri did not have expensive tastes by nature. He was modest, almost self-effacing, and was grateful for anything he received at all. Sylvain knew he could walk into any mid-sized town's marketplace and find something that Dimitri would appreciate and find useful.

The real stumbling block here was trying to get any gift Sylvain chose to reach Dimitri. Any gifts from House Gautier or its heir were sure to be delivered promptly and with great to-do to the prince. That treatment was less likely for any gifts from Jose, the anonymous mercenary currently bumming around in Alliance territory.

No, there was no chance he'd get anything to Dimitri by regular means, so Sylvain adjusted his plans.

Ingrid's birthday was a few weeks after Dimitri's, and Sylvain would be sending something for her as well. Easier to have something delivered to Galatea territory, and Dimitri would not mind receiving his own birthday gift a little bit late, because he was just the kind of guy who would appreciate the sentiment behind it more. Ingrid would be a good intermediary. And then Felix's birthday was a month after that, but getting something delivered to Fraldarius was going to be easier to manage than to Fhirdiad.

Geez, how did so many of his friends end up as winter babies? What got everyone going nine months earlier that year? Maybe it was true what they said about spring.

Sylvain was amusing himself imagining Ingrid's indignant sputtering if he ever made that remark to her, but really, he should have been paying attention to Jeralt at that moment. They were not on a battlefield, but Jeralt had brought Sylvain along to a contract negotiation. Sylvain was maybe meant to learn something here, but mostly he just zoned out standing around in the background while a merchant prattled on about the services he needed.

"There have been a considerable number of monster attacks in the area," the merchant explained, pouring out what might have been his fifth-best wine into Jeralt's cup. Jeralt grunted and drained the glass like it was cheap ale, and the merchant, with a bemused expression, topped off his glass again. Well, that was one way of avoiding running up a tavern tab.

"We can take you all the way to Daphnel, but we were headed the other way originally, so we're not going to be able to take you through Faerghus, if that's what you're looking for," Jeralt replied. Sylvain felt a surge of relief at that.

"Oh, that won't be a problem," the merchant said, perfectly amiable. "We can make further escort arrangements in Daphnel, but really, it's traversing Alliance territory that's the biggest concern to us right now."

Jeralt grunted, because it was nothing new. He'd heard merchants complain about things like that before: monsters in Leicester, bandits in Faerghus, internal unrest in the Empire. Day by day, the roads seemed to be getting less safe.

"Well, I think we can work something out," Jeralt said, sounding agreeable despite his gruff demeanor. "Don't worry, we'll get you and your merchandise up to the border in one piece."

It was all business as usual to Jeralt, but Sylvain found it a stroke of luck as far as his plans went. 

There were methods of sending something from one end of the continent to the other, but they were all exponentially more expensive the farther the distance. Sylvain had asked around, had compared prices, and had tried to figure out some scheme for it, but the long and short of it was this: either you requested someone take a package for you as a personal favor, or you paid a courier. 

The first option was unfeasible for Sylvain, unless he invoked his family name, and the second option was straining his budget. But the strain was considerably lessened if the distance was going to be shortened between him and the package's destination.

Unfortunately, matters of logistics being settled, Sylvain found himself faced with the far more difficult task before him.

He was going to have to write a letter to Ingrid.

* * *

"You okay, kid?" Jeralt asked as he slipped a roll of papers to Sylvain.

Sylvain had asked to borrow some paper earlier that day, but had expected Jeralt to take a few empty pages out of his ledger, not to brazenly demand from the merchant who had just hired them a whole stack of blank paper. The merchant had given it freely, but had been more than a little puzzled by the request. Maybe Jeralt just liked fucking with people. 

"What, don't I look fine?" Sylvain asked with a grin.

They walked together down the cobbled streets, passing uneasy, unarmed civilians who gawked openly at Jeralt and Sylvain's comparatively rough appearance. Jeralt looked like he was keeping an eye out for a tavern, but grunted something non-committal.

"Hope the paper isn't for your last will and testament," Jeralt remarked eventually. "Because by the look on your face, that would've been my guess."

"I just need to send a letter back home," Sylvain said, put out by how transparent he apparently was. He'd been certain his smile had been easy, but maybe he was out of practice.

"Got a lot to say?"

"Nah, just expect to go through a lot of drafts," Sylvain admitted.

"Yeah, family's like that sometimes," Jeralt huffed a laugh.

"Come on, boss, when was Byleth ever away from you long enough to write her letters?" Sylvain asked. He was fishing; Jeralt probably knew he was, but who wouldn't be curious?

"Had other family before her," Jeralt replied gruffly, shifting his attention from the streets to Sylvain, and eyeing him carefully.

"Had?" Sylvain asked.

"Had," Jeralt said with finality. But, perhaps feeling that would have been a harsh note to end on, continued, "Who're you writing to?"

"Little sister," Sylvain said.

Right after the lie left his mouth, he kicked himself, because now it was something he would have to keep track of, and he hastily thought back to figure out if he'd ever said anything to contradict it, but no. Until now, he'd done his best to keep quiet about any personal details, and nobody in the company had particularly pressed him for it.

"Anyway," Sylvain said, and let it trail off.

Jeralt didn't pick up the thread of conversation again, so they continued on in silence.

* * *

Sylvain carried the blank paper in the breast pocket of his jacket, and in the evenings, he would take out a pencil and try to write by torchlight.

He couldn't say for sure why he hesitated. Ingrid had taken to lecturing him on his conduct as of late, a sprig of a girl now grown into a gangly almost-woman and testing out adulthood by any means in her reach. But he hardly had any fear of what she would say to him, since she would not have a return address, and certainly never see him in person.

It was only that... whatever words he wanted to send were stoppered inside his mind by the apology that he felt he ought to be making first, but did not want to offer. He had nothing to apologize for, as far as he was concerned. What had he done wrong, truly? Deprived House Gautier of an heir? They yet had another son, if they needed one. 

It was not even as though he had deprived his friends of his company, since their visits could be intermittent at times. True, he had never gone as long without seeing any of them, but the lengths of time had been growing ever since the Tragedy of Duscur. A pall had been cast over them, shaped like the things they could not speak of: Glenn's death, Dimitri's haunted gaze, Felix and Ingrid steeped in grief of different flavors, and Dimitri's new Duscur companion who haunted the halls of Fhirdiad's castle like an uneasy ghost.

Byleth sat next to Sylvain in the evenings when he was composing letters that never quite left his head, her eyes turned away from the paper so as to give him privacy. She needn't have bothered, with how the pages stubbornly remained blank.

"Is it difficult, writing letters?" she asked.

"Well, sometimes. Depends on a lot of things," Sylvain shrugged.

"Do you not know what to say?" she asked.

"It's more that there's things I'd rather not get into."

"Oh." She sad in silence for a while, eyes fixed on a point in the distance as thoughts percolated in her head. "Then don't say the things you don't want to. Who's making you do otherwise?"

Who indeed, Sylvain wondered himself.

It couldn't be as easy as Byleth claimed, but in the face of her overwhelming certainty, Sylvain wanted to believe he could be so brazen.

So he offered no apologies, and no excuses. He wrote to Ingrid of the gifts he sent, instead. For Ingrid, he'd packed a book of chivalry tales that were popular in the Alliance but uncommon in Faerghus. He wished her a happy birthday, and requested she send on the rest of the package to Dimitri, along with the letter he planned to enclose for him as well.

In the end, the only thing he apologized for was sending Dimitri's gift late: a weapons maintenance kit that he was going to find useful, packed along with a monograph on the wildflowers of eastern Fodlan that Sylvain guessed Dedue might enjoy. Sylvain had no real clue when Dedue's birthday was, but Dimitri would be pleased for his new friend to receive a gift, because he was soft-hearted like that.

And because he was on a roll, he wrote a letter to Felix as well, promising him a gift for his birthday to follow. Sylvain stumbled over almost-apologies again, but crossed out any indication of them before they slipped into the final draft. 

* * *

They ended up, indeed, escorting the merchant all the way to Daphnel. It was easy work, as such things went, with only a few notable incidents: mostly monsters that their patrols stumbled into, and a group of bandits that they scared off.

The merchant was headed through Galatea, and by that point Jeralt's mercenaries had earned enough goodwill that the caravan master did not mind it when Byleth walked up to him and asked for a package to be dropped off for Count Galatea's daughter. They were on the way, after all.

And a few days before her birthday, as Ingrid opened a curious package coming to her from parts unknown, she flinched in recognition at the handwriting in the attached letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The childhood friends technically don't appear in this chapter, but they're here in Sylvain's heart.


	5. Revelation arrived as unwelcome as a late wedding guest, disheveled and with mismatched shoes

Ingrid could not imagine who the package was from. One of her brothers, as he brought it to her room, made a teasing comment that it was a birthday gift from a suitor, and got himself chased off as a result.

It was wrapped in parcel paper of middling quality, a bit oily to the touch but enchanted to keep the contents protected from the elements. Under Ingrid's scissors, the paper split quickly. There was an envelope with her name, and though the loping way her name was written on it--Ingrid Brandl Galatea--was familiar, she could not connect it to the Alliance in any way. She knew she had distant relatives in Daphnel, but would any of them be sending her gifts?

It wasn't until she opened the envelope and began reading the letter inside that realization struck her like lightning.

The letter was from Sylvain. He was alive and well somewhere in the Alliance, or at least sufficiently so to be sending birthday gifts and penning glib letters.

She was going to throttle him.

  


* * *

  


Sylvain's disappearance happened to mixed reactions. After the fact, when they cobbled together whatever scraps of information they had, Ingrid, Felix and Dimitri managed to get an idea of the immediate aftermath, though not with any help from the adults involved.

Felix was, out of the three of them, the first to find out anything was amiss at all. Margrave Gautier, furious and indignant at Sylvain's disappearance, had sent out soldiers to track Sylvain down, and had sent only marginally diplomatic letters to Fraldarius in order to inquire if Sylvain was there. The first letter came by way of a contingent of stony-faced soldiers who were apparently ready to drag the missing heir home bodily if he wouldn't come otherwise.

Rodrigue, surprised and concerned to find out that Sylvain was missing, went to speak with Felix about it.

Felix had responded to any questions with the usual mix of contempt and acerbic commentary that he used whenever he addressed his father these days, until suddenly Rodrigue's countenance changed, and the permissive father was replaced by Duke Fraldarius at his most forbidding. 

"Felix," Rodrigue spoke gravely, "if you know where your friend is, if you are helping him in any way, it would be best for everyone if you told me now, before the situation grows out of your control. I cannot help either of you if you conceal things from me, and by the Margrave's tone, Sylvain will need all the support he can get the longer this goes on."

If there was any sharp retort on Felix's tongue, it died right there. His father had never been angry with him, no matter how much cause Felix gave him on a daily basis. And he did not seem to be angry with Felix at the moment, either. But it still quelled him, because if Felix knew anything, it was that his own father was far more peaceable than Sylvain's. It was one thing if Sylvain was actually in serious peril, but if this really was some hare-brained fit of youthful delinquency, Margrave Gautier was not a man who'd hesitate to turn the full brunt of his anger on his wayward son.

"I don't know where Sylvain is," Felix said, his usual sneering tone subdued. "He didn't tell me he'd be running off." Unless one counted the one or two odd times when Sylvain had laughed and suggested running away together, but those were jokes. Those had been jokes. No way was the lazy asshole actually willing to live rough just to get away from his family. Felix shook his head.

"Alright," Rodrigue said at length. "I believe you. But if you hear from him..."

"You'll be the first to know," Felix snapped. "Now get out of my room."

Rodrigue did so, going to pen a response letter to Margrave Gautier, and ushering his soldiers on. The Margrave would proceed to send a few more letters, increasingly angry as Sylvain's absence extended, but Felix would not find out about those until much later, because his father did not come to badger him about Sylvain's whereabouts after the initial conversation.

The next of their group of friends to find out was Ingrid, and only because the Margrave's men passed through Galatea as well in their quest to seek out Sylvain. They revealed little information save for Sylvain being missing, and Ingrid would not truly understand how everything had happened until she met in Fhirdiad with Dimitri and Felix a month later, and Sylvain was still ostensibly gone.

Dimitri, to his eternal indignation, did not truly know that Sylvain was missing until that very same meeting in Fhirdiad. He had, of course, heard that Sylvain had caused some sort of ruckus right after his birthday, and that the Margrave's men were all over Faerghus looking for him, but nobody had seen fit to tell him just how serious the situation was, or the fact that Sylvain had not been found yet even a month after the fact.

No, instead Dimitri understood the extent of it only when the Margrave arrived in Fhirdiad for his usual business, and the tall red-haired son at his side this time was Miklan.

He'd been dumbfounded at first, because having not heard much about the situation--or rather, having not been told much of it--Dimitri assumed it had resolved itself somehow. Sylvain's fits of mischief were frequent, but he was not the type to run away from consequences, being more inclined to just accept punishments and get things over with.

But when Dimitri found himself alone with Miklan, and asked where Sylvain was, Miklan gave a slow smile and stretched his arms over his head indolently as he replied,

"Still on the run, the little prick."

Dimitri bristled, not only at the insult to his friend, but also at the fact that Miklan did not have half of Sylvain's charm to pull off his same mannerisms. What was charmingly roguish about Sylvain somehow looked rude and coarse when performed by Miklan.

"That is absurd," Dimitri found himself blurting out. "Where would he run to?"

Miklan gave a shrug, some dismissive roll of the shoulders that demonstrated just how much--or how little, really--he cared about his brother's fate. Maybe it was the play of the light, or just some natural cant of Miklan's expression, but there seemed to be a smile tugging at his lips, even though Dimitri had never known Miklan to be the smiling type. Rather more prone to glowering, in Dimitri's experience, and now he seemed smugly pleased about something. Dimitri did not like.

Dimitri liked it even less when Ingrid and Felix came to Fhirdiad, and he discovered that they did not know about Sylvain's whereabouts any more than Dimitri did.

Margrave Gautier was perhaps the only person less pleased than them, however. He thundered about the palace with a constant glower that made the familial resemblance to Miklan all the more pronounced, and if he deigned to speak to Ingrid or Felix at all, it was to assail them with suspicious questions about Sylvain, or their last conversations with him, as though asking the same things over and over might help him catch them in a mistake.

The Margrave did not take the same liberties with Dimitri, though even if he was more delicate in his questioning, Dimitri still saw through the transparent attempts at garnering some kind of information.

The questions stopped when Rodrigue stepped in, clearly at the end of his patience, and waved off the Margrave. 

Rodrigue had his own separate conversations with them all, not prodding with questions, but advising them to come to him if they learned anything about Sylvain. 

Of course, Dimitri could think of no other course of action he would take, and Ingrid agreed just as quickly. Felix had muttered something rebellious in response, but hadn't outright said he wouldn't do as instructed, and so that was as close to an agreement as they were likely to extract out of Felix.

Dimitri had been looking forward to the rest of Fhirdiad's short summer, to be spent in the company of his friends, but Sylvain's absence had cast an uneasy pall over the rest of the season. Felix was still angry with Dimitri, and Ingrid was cold and rude towards Dedue, so it was not as if things would have gone all that smoothly even with Sylvain there.

Yet, when Dimitri could not stand the roiling atmosphere, when Ingrid's attempts at keeping peace between him and Felix fell short, Dimitri found himself wishing Sylvain were there to break the tension with one of his usual irreverent quips.

It was a selfish reason to want his friend back, and it made Dimitri realize with great shame how little he had appreciated Sylvain's role in their friend group, but regardless, the conclusion was the same. The rest of the summer wasn't the same as it would have been once, and Dimitri did not want to keep thinking about how this was yet another thing to endure under the long shadow the Tragedy of Duscur cast. Easier to think that they were all just sad and missing their friend.

  


* * *

  


When Ingrid and Felix returned Fhirdiad unexpectedly that winter, Dimitri was not certain what to believe. The next time they were meant to meet would have been in a couple of months, in Fraldarius, for Felix's birthday. They had not come to Fhirdiad for Dimitri's own birthday, which had passed as it did every year: with nobles clamoring to bring him gifts and clutter Fhirdiad's streets for the celebrations. 

Felix, for one, had bluntly said he hadn't wanted to come anyway--a bruising statement, considering the crying fits he would have once had over missing Dimitri's birthday--and Ingrid's family could not always afford the expense of travelling back and forth between Galatea and Fhirdiad. Given that Sylvain was still missing, Dimitri didn't think it would have been in very good taste for the rest of them to gather like usual, anyway.

So Dimitri was somewhat surprised to have Ingrid and Felix show up the way they did, with little forewarning. 

When Ingrid presented him with the package, Dimitri's surprise only mounted. He had received his birthday gift from Ingrid already, so he did not know what to make of it that she strode into his room with another package, settling it on Dimitri's desk.

She indicated the envelope with the package. It was simple, with only 'Dimitri' scrawled across the front. It was held closed by a simple dribble of wax, but with no official seal.

The handwriting made his stomach drop in recognition, even before he tore open the envelope and began reading the contents. It was from Sylvain.

He was alive, was Dimitri's first, relieved thought. Then, with just a spark of anger: he was alive and well enough to send gifts, which probably meant he was not in any trouble at all, and had worried them all needlessly.

Sylvain's letter showed no understanding about the gravity of the situation either, instead breezily sending along birthday wishes and vague assurances that he was fine and having a grand old time 'on the run'. 

Dimitri was ready to be furious until he came to the part of the letter that made him pause in his reading.

"Ah," Dimitri remarked, "he sent something for Dedue along with my birthday gift."

Dedue, who was been sitting quiet at the other end of the room, studiously practicing his reading so as to best avoid eye contact with either Felix of Ingrid, looked up in surprise.

Dimitri ripped open the package to remove a slim volume, wider than it was long, and pass it on to Dedue, who took it with some surprise, and dropped down heavily in his chair to leaf through the book.

This task accomplished, Dimitri went back and continued reading the letter from where he'd left off. There was only a little more to it, but the ending lines were a plea not to tell anyone about his having contacted them. There was a note of desperation to the request that, for once, Sylvain could not dilute with charm and jokes.

It brought to mind, unpleasantly, Margrave Gautier's hostile rounds of questioning right after Sylvain's departure. The self-satisfied way Miklan slunk around the palace when he found himself accompanying his father to the capital in Sylvain's stead. And Rodrigue's request--

"We cannot go to the Margrave with this," Dimitri said.

"We can't keep this from him," Ingrid said, loathe to argue with Dimitri, but also unhappy to be drafted into covering Sylvain's antics. "He is Sylvain's father, and he should know."

"That may well drive Sylvain to stay away," Dimitri said.

Felix interrupted him with a snort, his lip curling up in disgust.

"Let Sylvain deal with his own problems," Felix said. His tone was belligerent, that it took Dimitri a beat to realize Felix was not disagreeing with him in substance, only in spirit. "He got himself into this mess, let him drag himself out of it. Why should we do anything at all?"

Ingrid frowned, clearly disapproving.

"We can't just abandon him like that--" she began saying.

"Like he abandoned us?" Felix retorted.

"Please," Dimitri sighed, "I am not suggesting we abandon him. But we must act with discretion--"

They continued to argue back a forth a while, disagreeing on what should be done as much as on what realistically could be done for Sylvain, when he seemed not to believe he needed help at all, and in fact explicitly requested they not say or do anything in this regard.

Dedue, meanwhile, sat quietly, thumbing through the volume he had received. He didn't know what Sylvain might have said about the gift, beyond the fact that it was for him, but he still felt oddly touched by the gesture. In spite of the fact that he and Sylvain were not that well acquainted, and far from close, the gift had been unexpectedly kind.

The book was a kind of scientific treaty on the types of wildflowers to be found in the eastern parts of Fodlan, near the border to Almyra, but it was illustrated lovingly by an artist's hands. The text was just as thorough, with a gardener's eye for detail: the types of soil the plants preferred, the climate, the amount of water, if they grew in sun or shade. This was someone's work of passion, and Dedue found each turn of the page bringing him delightful new botanical details. He would take his time with the book, and return to it often.

"We are getting nowhere!" Dimitri finally declared, grown sick of bickering. "Dedue, what do you think?"

Dedue startled and looked up from his book to see all three sets of eyes in the room now settled on him.

"Why are you asking him--" Ingrid began, with ice in her voice.

"Quiet," Dimitri cut her off, just as ruthlessly as he did anyone else, in spite of Ingrid being his friend of long standing. It made Dedue embarrassed that Dimitri would speak to his friends in such a manner on his behalf; it was not worth burning these bridges on his behalf, he didn't think.

But, perhaps shocked at Dimitri speaking to her so, Ingrid lapsed into silence.

"What do you think?" Dimitri asked again, more kindly.

"I think," Dedue said, focusing on no other eyes than Dimitri's, "that if Sylvain were here, he would have stopped you from arguing like this. About anything."

The three of them hung their heads, as though only then they realized how they'd been coming across. Even Felix, unapologetic as he usually was, looked abashed for once. Dedue hadn't meant it as a reprimand, but at least nobody was yelling anymore.

"We need to tell Lord Rodrigue," Dimitri declared. 

"What do you think he's going to be able to do, boar? Track Sylvain down by scent, like a hound?"

"No, but," Dimitri raised the letter he was still holding in his hand, "Sylvain mentioned in my letter as he no doubt mentioned in yours that he will be sending a gift for your birthday, too. The trail may have gone cold on the first package, but with Lord Rodrigue's help, it may be easier to pick up once the next package shows up in Fraldarius territory."

Felix still looked unconvinced, but that was more just to be contrary, and not because he could find a flaw with the plan just yet.

"Whatever gifts he sends me better be worth this hassle," Felix muttered unhappily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what, Felix, you're going to get a great birthday gift and you're gonna fucking love it.


	6. Not a throne of lies! Barely a footstool of misdirection

If the winter had seemed mild in Adrestia, it was doubly so in Leicester, where even at the tail end of Ethereal Moon it was still warm enough for a dunk in in the lake. By Sylvain's standards, at least. When he wandered into camp, his hair dripping and his shirt on his shoulder, the other mercenaries eyed him grumpily.

"You'll catch your death if you do that each morning," one of them muttered, before passing to Sylvain a bowl of watery oatmeal.

"Leave 'im alone, they like their dips cold in Faerghus," another one interjected.

"Who says I'm from Faerghus?" Sylvain laughed, perfectly smooth.

"Skinny dipping in the ass end of winter says you're from Faerghus," the first mercenary replied. He was a bug-eyed old man, the kind of indestructible old leather bag who was kept alive by a potent mix of paranoia and razor-edged instinct for self-preservation. They called him Old Tiff, though it was anyone's guess if that was his actual name, and nobody in this company was inclined to guesses.

"It's _barely_ winter," Sylvain said, and gestured vaguely to their surroundings. 

They were camped out in what had once been an old fort but was now a ruin, two stone walls and scattered jutting rocks left over after the nearby villagers had scavenged it for bricks. 

It had snowed at some point, certainly, but all that were left were filthy patches of it in spots where the sun did not reach. The weather was cheerfully sunny, whereas Sylvain was certain that, at this time, Gautier territory was three feet under the snow and acting far less precious about it than these warm-blooded southerners. Not that Sylvain was going to expose himself by pointing that out.

"So're you from Faerghus, or not?" Petros asked while chewing with his mouth open.

Sylvain had to once again rein in the urge to strange the little shit, but just so he wouldn't let Petros get away with anything, Sylvain flung his shirt straight into Petros' face.

Petros made a distressed sound as the slightly damp shirt smacked him, and then flailed to throw it off like it was a dead animal. It hadn't gotten into Petros' oatmeal, thankfully, but it did fall onto the ground, on the scraggly, dead yellow grass they'd all been trampling underfoot since setting camp. Sylvain picked it up and shook it out before pulling it on. 

"You're all just sensitive," Sylvain told them. "It's not that cold."

"It isn't," another mercenary groused, from where she was sorting through supplies and repacking rations.

Sylvain gestured towards her--see, what did I tell you?--but the others were not convinced.

"That don't prove anything, Margo's from Faerghus too," Tiff snorted.

Sylvain did not protest any further, because there was a thin line between being mysterious and sounding defensive, and anyway, Faerghus was a bigger place than Gautier, and lots of people were from Faerghus without also being nobility. He sat down and ate instead, and the conversation moved on.

* * *

Escort jobs were good work, especially for the right merchant. That wasn't necessarily the richest ones, who had a tendency to look down their noses at the 'hired help', and were more likely to skimp on the bill. It seemed the higher the profits a merchant raked in, the more dubious their means, and most of the richest merchants had their own permanent guards on staff, who tended to match their employer on level of shadiness anyway.

No, a solid job for a small mercenary company like Jeralt's was usually for some coalition of middling merchants who pooled their resources into a caravan because they knew there was safety in numbers. They were usually the ones to pay most reliably and treat hired mercenaries most respectfully, and they also tended to be risk-averse to a fault, making for safe routes.

That being said, even the safest routes were not as safe as they once might have been.

The road through Riegan territory and heading into Derdriu had been plagued by monsters for a while now. Jeralt's company spent nearly a month on escort jobs back and forth, even in spite of how low the traffic was in winter. Like patrolling the same stretch of road, from one end to the other: reach one point, and turn right around to go the other way. They didn't mind, because Derdriu was as good place as any to spend money.

And the perk of watching so many merchants' backs, of course: the discounts. Sylvain found himself certainly not minding the discounts. He was still on the lookout for a gift for Felix, and if he was going to get it to him in time, he was going to have to figure it out soon.

It was how he ended up in the Lower Market in Derdriu with Byleth, browsing the wares of one of the merchants they were now on friendly terms with.

Ansel Victor gave them a brief smile and a solemn nod when they entered his shop, showing he had a good memory. Byleth nodded back.

"Still got the friends and associates discount," Ansel assured, as he had been the one to grant it to them in the first place. 

His eldest son had been nominally in charge of the caravan on the road, but Sylvain and anyone with eyes could spot that it was because he was being groomed to take over the family business. The father was still very much the hawk-eyed client they'd had to please, and had watched the mercenaries closely enough to have come across as borderline rude. Only when they'd reached their destination had the man beamed at them and given them a bonus on their payment.

Now, Ansel seemed a man well at ease, in his shop, behind his counter. The glut of his wares went to the noble house that he was associated with, but he still had this little business on the side, selling a selection of lower quality items to the common folk who could afford it. 

"I think we'll just be browsing today," Sylvain said, giving Ansel his most charming and apologetic smile.

"Hm, well, lots of people come in planning to browse," Ansel said, "and they still walk out with their purses lighter than they came in with."

Sylvain would have made a crack about robbery, except he had an inkling that Ansel was the kind of man who took exception to that sort of joking. So instead he laughed at Ansel's quip, letting him keep the last word.

Almost lost in the strength of Ansel's presence was the willowy figure of a boy standing next to him. He had the same pale green hair as Ansel and his eldest son, so Sylvain surmised this must have been the mysterious younger son who hadn't been on the caravan trip with them. Byleth, like some eerie little social butterfly, angled her path so she joined Ansel and his youngest son at the counter, so Sylvain made the rounds of the shop by himself.

Unfortunately, somewhere between the mismatched bolts of fabric and the tea pots that were probably mass produced in some manufactury in Gloucester, Sylvain realized he wasn't going to find anything to Felix's liking in that place. He should have gone to an armorer. He headed back to the counter, where Ansel was explaining his plans to send his second son to Garreg Mach in a year or two.

"--then once he's a knight and part of a noble household, it only follows he'll be making connections for us and helping expand the business," Ansel was chattering.

The son, looking a frail fourteen years of age at most, was quiet throughout his father's diatribe, instead obediently copying receipts into a ledger: the kind of busy work one gave to a relative with handsome handwriting but not much say in things. He did not seem enthused at the notion of becoming a knight, either, and Sylvain felt a pang of sympathy.

"Not everyone is suited to being a knight," Byleth said, as delicate as a mulekick to the mouth. The boy's shoulders hunched, taking the remark like a comment on his shortcomings, instead of the neutral observation Byleth meant it as.

Ansel sniffed. "With enough hard work, anyone can be suited to anything. Besides, it's the lot of a second son in life. His brother's the one inheriting the business."

Sylvain's pang of sympathy turned into a knot in his throat. He was a second son as well, and if Miklan had had a crest too, Sylvain would be looking towards a leisurely life as the spare right about now. But evidently, even for the common folk, children were meant only to bend the course of their own lives to the expectations of their parents. And nobody ever seemed to get what they wanted.

"Found something you like?" Ansel asked.

"Nope," Sylvain replied, shrugging. "Got a real picky friend with a birthday coming up."

"Ah, that's how it is," Ansel chuckled. "You're still free to shop for yourself."

In the end, they took their leave without buying anything. They hit up three more shops in the Lower Market before they got a recommendation for a good weapons vendor. 

The weapons vendor was in a better part of Derdriu than they'd yet visited, and Sylvain could feel that difference in the cobblestone beneath his feet, smooth and slightly more archaic, but far less damaged because of lesser traffic in the area. The streets were quieter, the walls here kept freshly whitewashed in a way the smoke-blackened houses of the Lower Market couldn't quite manage.

They found the weapon merchant's shop by the ostentatious display on the stall up front, a nice selection laid out for the perusal of potential customers. There was nobody behind the stall, in a clear show of trust towards the expected clientele in this part of town, but two young men were already browsing the wares.

Sylvain would have gladly ignored the two as he and Byleth went about their own errands, but approaching made it clear they were young noblemen, or at least some scions of nobility who thought that from the moment they grew whiskers they suddenly had authority to wield. They both had swords on their hips, and tunics so finely embroidered that some seamstress had probably lost her eyesight making them.

Dread fell heavy to the bottom of Sylvain's stomach, some sort of sour mix of anticipation and remembrance. He would have known exactly what tack to take with them once, because he'd been one of them. Now they were an unpleasant reminder of worse days and unpleasant habits, and Sylvain found himself bitter to be reminded that he had once had a different place in the world, and that his lineage and title would always be there to suck him back in the moment he let something slip.

So he did not feel terribly gracious about it when the two noblemen noticed Byleth and shared a knowing look with one another. One of them, obviously the more bold one, probably for his higher place in the pecking order, looked Byleth up and down with a smirk. He was growing a horrible little mustache that only made his upper lip look dirty, but evidently that was not enough to poke a hole in his self-importance.

Byleth noticed nothing, because she was absorbed in inspecting the weapons on display, her eye always drawn more surely to a sword than a man. So the shameless noble brat caught Sylvain's eye instead, shifting his obnoxious little smirk to whatever audience he could find.

"Everyone's putting out their finest wares today," the brat said, with a meaningful sidelong glance to Byleth's lacy tights, and his friend tittered like that had been some brilliant display of wit.

"The selection is a bit boring," Byleth remarked without taking her eyes off the swords.

The noble brat frowned uncertainly for a moment, before dismissing the notion that Byleth had been insulting him. She was barely even aware of him, and that was a state of affairs he could tolerate even less.

"I am certain entertainment can be found easier than a fine sword in this paltry collection," the noble brat declared in an aristocratic drawl that made Sylvain's teeth hurt to hear it. "Tell me, young man," he addressed Sylvain, as if he weren't the same age, "does your female companion do all your shopping for you?"

The friend tittered again.

"She does sometimes," Sylvain replied with a shrug. "You should know, since it looks like your mom might still be buying you short pants." 

The friend did not titter this time, instead sucking in breath in some reedy gasp as the noble brat recoiled. Sylvain wasn't sure what these two found more insulting, the notion that he was still a little boy wearing children's clothing, or the implication that his noble mother would stoop to shopping for her son's clothing, like some sort of commoner. Either way, the brat's purpling expression was oddly satisfying to see.

"How dare you," the brat hissed, and his hand went to his sword, slipping the blade halfway out before Sylvain remembered that he was unarmed, and that, maybe, he should panic.

He did not panic. He grinned, possessed by some hysterical amusement at the overreaction he had just caused.

"That's a blade of Zoltan," Byleth pointed out, her tone flat and unalarmed. She _was_ armed, unlike Sylvain, because trying to get her to go anywhere without a sword was like pulling teeth.

"Huh," Sylvain said, taking a better look. The sheath had been so gaudy and over embellished, that he hadn't noticed, but sure enough, the sword looked exactly like the illustrations that Felix always hungrily pored over in his spare time. "You're right. You know, I actually know what I'd like to get as a birthday gift."

The noble brat froze with his sword half-pulled, evidently flustered by the calm that his threats of violence were being met with. 

"You think he'd like it?" Byleth asked, tapping her chin in thought.

"Oh yeah, he's such a fanboy for Zoltan, it's adorable," Sylvain assured, his grin growing wide.

"Well, in that case," Byleth said, finally making eye contact with the noble brat as she pulled her own sword out of its sheath, "I'll duel you for the sword. If I win I get to keep it."

"Uh--" The noble brat, to his credit, recovered his wits much faster than Sylvain expected. "I accept your terms, but only if, when I win, you go on a date with me." A vicious little smile appeared on his face as he finished that statement, and by the smug look he gave to Sylvain, clearly he thought he'd be stealing his girlfriend.

"You sure? 'Cause I've seen her on dates, and that sounds like a lose-lose for you, pal," Sylvain warned.

"I'm sure," the brat persisted.

After that, well. All Sylvain could do was shrug and step aside.

Felix would be getting an amazing gift just in time for his birthday.


	7. Company policy does not permit you to send your coworkers' mail to spam

Felix glared at the door to his father's study for a long time. He could at any moment go in to glare at the man himself, except in that moment, the person Felix found himself most angry with was actually Sylvain. This was all Sylvain's fault. If Sylvain had sent a less ostentatious gift, some trinket that Felix could chuck into a pile of other gifts from previous years and then ignore for the rest of his life, he could at least have delayed, even wholesale avoided, this entire situation.

But Sylvain had been thoughtful enough to send a sword forged by Zoltan as a gift, knowing how much Felix had always wanted such a weapon, and knowing also that the swords were in particularly high demand, and thus rare enough that even a Duke's son would have trouble getting his hands on one. And Felix had not been prepared for it, much as the boar was still effusive about Sylvain's considerate gesture in including that Duscur interloper in his giftgiving, and much as Ingrid was still sighing over the pages of the book Sylvain had sent her, as though the ridiculous tales of chivalry contained therein could give her a knighthood by proxy.

Why did Sylvain have to had actually sent him a thing he would like? A sword he could not wait to to train with and use? That idiot.

Felix considered barging into his father's study. He pictured the satisfaction of slamming the door open hard enough to send it banging into the wall, but that was just a passing bout of pettiness, and would probably be counterproductive to what he was trying to accomplish.

Not that he'd figured out what he was trying to accomplish, either.

So he knocked tersely, and waited for the interminable pause before his father said 'come in'.

Rodrigue was sitting at his desk, a quill in his hand as he looked up to see who would come into the room. His expression lit up when he saw Felix, first with surprise and then with a warmth that made Felix want to gag.

"I thought I recognized the knock," Rodrigue offered with a smile.

Felix scowled, and didn't respond save to sullenly walk into the room. He bypassed the seat in front of his father's desk, heading instead towards the bookcase at the opposite wall and facing the leather-bound books. He'd marched a bit too forcefully to disguise the gesture as some casual circuit of the room, but he smothered the heat rising to his face with a belated wave of indignation: had Rodrigue implied he recognized the knock because it sounded like Glenn's? Felix glared at the shelf before him as he tried to remember the last time he had ever knocked at his father's door and what his knock might have sounded, but the entire line of thought was nonsense, so he put it aside.

"Is that a new sword?" Rodrigue asked, his voice mild and unassuming.

Oh, of course. Of course the old man would spot it right away. He was obviously slightly less blind than he was stupid, and maybe Felix had saved himself the trouble of uttering the words by carrying the sword on his hip.

"It was a gift," Felix grumbled. "From Sylvain."

He tried not to hunch his shoulders defensively, because he had done nothing wrong.

"Ah." A neutral sound. Polite acknowledgment. There was a shuffle of papers and then the creak of chair legs as Rodrigue rose from his seat.

Felix continued glaring mulishly at the books before him. ' _A Compendium of the Native Trees of Northern Faerghus_ ' had never done a thing to him, but now it was bearing the brunt of Felix's ire.

"May I?" 

Felix chanced a look aside to see his father gesturing towards the sword. Felix grunted something under his breath, but relented, unclipping the sheathed sword to pass it to Rodrigue.

His father, of course, made the appropriate impressed sounds, commending the workmanship and the balance, admiring the edge.

"A worthy gift," Rodrigue said as he presented the sword back to Felix. "Sylvain truly knows your tastes."

"Shut up," Felix snapped in response. "What do _you_ know about my tastes?" Then, resentful to have to admit it, "It's fine."

Rodrigue just looked at Felix in silence for a few seconds--Felix could see him from the corner of his eye--before nodding his head and turning to walk back to his desk.

"I know you want what's best for your friend, Felix," Rodrigue said.

"And that's why I'm supposed to agree he needs to be hunted down like a dog?" Felix muttered, and bit off the words before he could reveal anything more.

"Nothing of the sort," Rodrigue replied. "Though, with each day that passes, I am afraid it may yet come to that. The Margrave has been getting... restless."

Felix's head whipped around then, and he fixed his father with a glare that could strip paint. Yet Rodrigue seemed unflappable to say the least. He opened the fine lacquered letter box on his desk to produce a stack of letters--the broken wax seal had the Crest of Gautier. Felix, in spite of himself, found his feet taking him closer to the desk, leaning over to see the stack of letters. 

"There's talk of sending Miklan with a small force to retrieve Sylvain," Rodrigue said as he placed down four, five, a dozen letters with increasingly disordered handwriting. The quill had pressed tiny punctures through some spots, and ink had blotted ugly in others. 

"He can't do that!" Felix blurted out.

"Oh? Certainly he _can_ ," Rodrigue said evenly. "Do you know a reason he shouldn't?"

Felix felt a jab of fear at the notion, but he could not explain that visceral knowledge to his father. He couldn't quite put into words why Miklan made a cold, sickly shiver settle in his stomach, except there was a corresponding feeling in the way Sylvain flinched when his brother moved too quickly or raised his hand unexpectedly.

And maybe it was also a waste of breath to say anything about Sylvain finally escaping the sick expectations that this holy kingdom put on its people, to line up and die pointlessly just so praises could be sung to their corpses. If Rodrigue did not understand the perversity of this notion when it came to his own son, why would he understand it now, when Sylvain had escaped the entire idiotic thing?

"He can't send Miklan," Felix said instead. 

Surely even Rodrigue could see that. There was no mistaking the dark glee that Miklan displayed in the recent month at his father's side. For once, he was the son who fulfilled expectations, and Sylvain was the wayward bastard who disappointed, and if the Margrave was coming unhinged, it was most likely because Miklan was helping stoke those fires. 

And Felix, much as he loathed the notion-- he could all too easily imagine Miklan coming home to inform the Margrave that Sylvain had suffered some unfortunate accident on the way: that bandits fell upon them, or Sylvain's horse threw him and broke his neck. A long fall down a dark well. It would not be the first time.

"I agree," Rodrigue said, and Felix blinked in surprise. "This takes a delicate touch, I think, and Miklan is not so deft in matters such as these."

He swept up the letters again, tidying his desk with fastidious little motions, and Felix felt infuriated all over again.

"Don't pretend you're doing this as a favor to Sylvain," Felix snapped. "The boar asked you, so now you care what happens to that fool? He's better off wherever he is now, he doesn't need you to ride to his rescue. Nobody does. Why can't you stay out of it?"

Rodrigue looked sad for a fleeting moment, and perhaps tired most of all.

"I thought, for a long time, that staying out of it would be for the best," Rodrigue said after a long pause, in the voice of a man making a dire confession. "It is hardly appropriate to meddle in another man's family, and I did not think such a thing would be appreciated either way. I could do nothing more than treat Sylvain kindly under my own roof. But I see now that any kindness I thought I was rendering would be undone at the end, when I sent him home again."

Felix found himself speechless. Staring.

"So you see," Rodrigue continued, placing his elbows on his desk and lacing his fingers together, "I find myself feeling at least partially responsible for Sylvain's situation having degenerated so much that he would have no other option but to run. But it is also an opportunity to act, for once. To make a difference now, where I refused to in the past."

Shame knotted hot in Felix's stomach, as he found himself considering that, for all his indignation, Felix had never truly done anything more than his father to help Sylvain.

' _Let's run away together one day_ ,' Sylvain had said with a smile on his face but a strain around his eyes. Felix couldn't help wondering what difference it would have made if he had taken the words seriously.

"What's going to happen to Sylvain when he's brought back?" Felix asked, subdued and uncertain. It had been full years since the last time he had sought reassurance from his father, and he wasn't certain that was what he was doing now, except that it felt like the beginning of some fragile armistice to even ask.

"We will see if it even comes to that," Rodrigue replied.

Felix breathed in, then let it out slowly. He could still be angry with his father. He could still be contemptuous of the boar. He could still be utterly done with Sylvain, once this entire interlude was over. But the regrets that inaction instilled painted a dreary image in Felix's mind, and he was going to be different from his father in this, if nothing more.

...Would Glenn have done the same?

Maybe Glenn would have done something sooner.

But there was nobody else now. So Felix nodded.

"The courier who brought the sword is waiting downstairs," Felix grumbled, reluctant even to cooperate this much. "He says he came here from Derdriu."

Rodrigue smiled, in some sad tired way of his, and Felix turned abruptly away, unable to bear it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the beginning of a beautiful father-son road trip*.
> 
> *opinions of participants may differ


	8. Knighthood is just the agreement that everyone is going to put on metal pants before they go to war

Lone Moon brought a warm spring breeze to Derdriu. There were still a couple of anemic snowfalls throughout the month, pitiful compared to what Sylvain was used to, but it no longer even smelled like winter. 

More merchants in the Leicester Alliance were beginning to pick up business again, in addition to the few enterprising souls who decided to work instead of winter at home, but Jeralt had gotten his fill of escort contracts, and the rest of the company tacitly agreed. To put a dent in their boredom, Jeralt instead hired them out on a series of odder jobs that they didn't usually encounter out and about: proxy duelists, personal bodyguards, one memorable time they worked guard duty on something called a pleasure barge, and Sylvain had to explain to Petros what the deal was with the people in ribbons and owl feathers dancing everywhere.

At any rate, Sylvain couldn't say he minded, especially since this afforded him the time to explore Derdriu on his off hours. He had gotten a pretty good handle on Fhirdiad over his lifetime, but was discovering entirely new nooks and crannies in Derdriu.

Not that Byleth cared. She, of course, went down the the docks when she was bored, and planted herself there with a fishing rod. A lot of times, Jeralt would join her, but sometimes it was Sylvain who trailed after her on a lazy day, just to feel the bracing winds coming in from the sea.

"Catch anything good?" Sylvain asked her once, and almost immediately after, she reeled up a lone boot.

"Yes, as long as you're not looking to eat it," Byleth replied, and set the boot down.

"See if you can get me a new scabbard," Sylvain requested, and sat back to watch her cast her line into the harbor again. 

He found, for the first time in a long while, that he had nothing to complain about.

* * *

When he'd been younger, there was nothing Felix had looking forward to more than preparing to leave Fraldarius. That was because leaving usually meant heading to Fhirdiad, and seeing Dimitri, or at least going to Gautier, where Sylvain was.

Now, Felix couldn't stand the sight of the boar, and Sylvain was in Derdriu, a city that Felix only knew about in the abstract, and that he had never wanted to visit. That was probably why he was dragging his feet on actually packing, but he did not realize how much until the evening before they had to leave, when he was sitting in his room staring into a half-packed trunk.

A knock at the door jarred Felix out of the increasingly irritated spiral of his thoughts.

"Come in," he called out, only because he recognized the knock.

His mother poked her head in, took in the state of the room, and looked at him.

"Felix, you made a mess," she said in a deadpan.

Felix scowled and crossed his arms, but didn't argue with that assessment. Lady Larisse, Duchess Fraldarius, strode into her son's room and cast a look around before she identified a corner of the bed not currently occupied by any of the detritus of Felix's attempts at packing. She sat down and smoothed her skirt precisely, then folded her hands in her lap.

There were a few moments of silence between them, but that was not necessarily unusual. They were comfortable sitting quiet together; Felix could remember this ever since he was a small child at his mother's feet, looking up to see the underside of her embroidery as she worked, marveling at how it was always almost as neat on both sides even though most other people's were always a tangled mess on the hidden side.

But now it felt like his mother had something to say.

"You will be traveling for a few weeks," Larisse spoke eventually. "I know this may be longer than you'd like to be around your father, but I hope you will shelve any arguing for when you get back."

Felix scoffed.

"Felix." Larisse fixed him with her gaze, the brown eyes that he had inherited from her. He didn't usually have difficulty meeting her eyes the way he did with others, but this time he looked off to a point over her shoulder.

"I'm not a child, I can control myself," he muttered.

"I trust that you can," she nodded. Then she looked around the room again. "Would you like help packing?"

His shoulders slumped in relief at first, before he disguised the motion in a shrug.

"If you want to," he replied, looking at the ceiling this time. 

* * *

The entire company was staying at an inn while they were in Derdriu, so Sylvain woke to persistent knocking at the door one morning.

Of course, it wasn't like Jeralt was made of money, so they had to triple up on room occupancy. So Sylvain wasn't the only one woken up by the knock. Across the room, Bertrund groaned loudly and then threw a pillow at Sylvain.

"Go answer it," Bertrund demanded, before turning on his other side and burying his face into the sheets.

Sylvain grumbled, but he was lower in the pecking order than Bertrund, one of the most senior members of the company, so he rose from bed. He had to step carefully around Old Tiff, who was snoring on a divan with his legs hanging off the edge. Apparently, as twitchy as Tiff was in the wilderness, all it took was a roof and four walls to render the man completely insensate.

Finally reaching the door, Sylvain opened it to Jeralt.

"Good, you're awake," Jeralt said. "Get dressed, I have a job for you."

"Just me?" Sylvain checked.

"Just you. It's a small job."

Over Jeralt's shoulder, Sylvain could see Byleth, already awake and doe-eyed as she was at any time of day. Maybe she knew about this job from the night before, but Sylvain wouldn't have put it past her that she had been woken just minutes before. It was uncanny how she could just lie down and go to sleep when she needed, and then rise and be instantly alert when she was done.

But, either way, now Sylvain was curious. He dressed in the room, but picked up his armor and weapon so he could get kitted downstairs and let his roommates continue their sleep. In the open field, Sylvain relied on a halberd, but in the city, he had taken to carrying a sword instead, which tended not only to draw less attention, but be more useful in the close quarters of an urban battlefield.

Breakfast that morning was a bread roll and an apple that Jeralt handed to him.

"Eat those on the way," Jeralt added, and Sylvain looked over towards Byleth to see her devouring a Noa fruit.

Now he was intrigued, but it didn't seem they were in that much of a hurry, since Jeralt didn't rush them as they walked down the street and off towards the so-called lower city. Sylvain couldn't tell if that part of the city was actually geographically lower or not, but it was nearer the water and the docks, and tended to be where the working people and the fish smells were concentrated. All the nobles or the rich merchants tended to be farther away from the water as a result, or at least on the more scenic parts of the coast.

Sylvain still had no idea what was happening when they reached their apparent destination, a small tinsmith's shop, judging by the sign over the door. He didn't ask, because he was intrigued how this whole thing was going to pan out, but the presumed tinsmith opened the door, and looked instantly relieved to see Jeralt.

They were bustled into the house, the first floor of which was half workshop, half parlor, in that cluttered-together way that commoner houses tended to be when their owners could not afford a dedicated room for every activity. The tinsmith introduced his spouse--Sylvain would have said wife, except just looking at them, Sylvain would not have wagered on the particular gender--and when Sylvain looked up towards the second floor, he saw tiny hands gripping the balusters, and accompanying pairs of eyes peering down. Sylvain winked at the children, and this stirred a sudden hushed exchange between them, squeaky-voiced enough to carry, but incomprehensible to him. 

Taking a better look at the tinsmith, his brown skin, the beads in his hair, the way he styled his beard, Sylvain could see he was foreign.

"They think they can get away with terrorizing us because we are Almyran," the tinsmith's spouse explained, hands fisted in the fabric of their apron to stop their angry shaking.

A few disparate clues came together for Sylvain, at least. It was one of _those_ jobs, then. The little side-gigs that Jeralt claimed came 'out of my own coffers', which meant that no money would be exchanging hands, though quite a few innkeepers that Jeralt had run off on would have been very interested indeed in any coffers Jeralt might have had.

"Don't worry, we'll handle them," Jeralt promised. "Best you go upstairs with your kids until they get here."

The tinsmith grabbed Jeralt's hand then, not quite shaking it, but clasping it tight nonetheless.

"We are thankful, ser. We are very thankful. But," his throat bobbed as he swallowed nervously, "we haven't much coin to pay you. Business, you see-- it hasn't been-- because we're Almyran--"

"That's alright," Jeralt grunted, and shook off the man's concern. "You need the coin more than I do."

The exchange continued for a while longer, the two Almyrans going through reels of thanks and promises of future payment that felt more customary than anything, and Jeralt going through repeated refusals.

Eventually he convinced them to go upstairs, where presumably they would be out of harm's way whenever the expected company arrived. Jeralt pulled up a chair in front of the door, sword lying across his lap as he settled in to wait. Byleth stood by the tinsmith's worktable, curiously looking over the mess of tools and half-finished work.

Sylvain watched them for a bit, thinking.

"You know, this is probably stuff that knights should handle," Sylvain pointed out, just to see Jeralt's reaction.

Jeralt snorted, and turned an unimpressed stare on Sylvain.

"There's no knights here, kid," he said. "Unless you're about to spring something on me."

"Nope," Sylvain said. "No knights here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is more of a transitional chapter, so not much happens, but it's fine, things are moving. We'll get there.


	9. I went on a roadtrip with my dad and all I got was this lousy get-along shirt

Felix had every intention of keeping his promise to his mother, and quietly tolerating his father's presence the entire trip.

But he still couldn't help feeling irritated by how his father seemed perfectly content to make it easy on him. Rodrigue kept only to necessary conversation before they headed out, explaining their itinerary for the day and their travel path to Derdriu, and then once they were out, kept his mouth shut as he rode his horse a respectable two horse-lengths ahead of Felix; close enough that Felix could close the distance if he needed to say anything, but far away enough that Felix wasn't forced to make small talk with his father.

The half dozen guards who accompanied them, loyal retainers of House Fraldarius to a one, were fanned out around them in a loose protective configuration, because the roads weren't quite so safe since the Tragedy of Duscur; but the group remained small enough that they could travel at a good clip. Rodrigue chatted with one or another as they rotated through their formations, not really having anything to report but checking in with their Duke because they were always all too happy to speak with him.

One or two tried to chat with Felix the same way, but Felix did not have the same easy manner as his father, and also no inclinations towards gabbing away with every person that crossed his path. He grunted curt responses and hunched in his saddle with a sour look on their face, until whoever tried to speak with him gave up and moved on.

So Felix remained quiet and bored, increasingly sore from his saddle, and glaring at the back of his father's head like the heat of his gaze could set the old man's hair on fire.

Rodrigue did nothing to provoke Felix, and yet Felix found himself provoked. In some ways, it was even worse when his father did nothing objectionable, because Felix could find no reason to go off on him, and his anger cooled off in his chest, unspent and spoiling like old food. Maybe it was an awful way to live, but Felix had never really managed to burn through all the initial explosive anger that had burst free inside him after Glenn's death, when Rodrigue first said that awful thing.

The months following the Tragedy of Duscur, when Felix's anger and grief had burned hottest, Rodrigue made himself scarce. Or--not scarce, but he had gone where he was needed. The Kingdom was in disarray, and before the regency was set up, default custody of Dimitri had fallen to Rodrigue. He had been there to pick up the pieces, put the country back together and do his duty towards the throne.

It suited Felix just fine. In those days, he felt nothing but a contempt towards his father for what he had said about Glenn's death; an anger so potent that it made him a bit queasy. Even if Rodrigue had been around, Felix would have gone to great lengths to snub and ignore him.

It was just, well... someone was easier to ignore when they were actually around to notice they were being ignored. And Felix could sustain his anger easier when Rodrigue was around to be a constant reminder of it. Maybe it was not a healthy way to live, but it was the choice Felix had made: to be angry with his father until one or both of them were dead. And there was nothing Rodrigue could do about it.

"There is an inn ahead. It would be a good place to stop for the night," Rodrigue said--to no one in particular, maybe to everyone, but tilting his head to one side so Felix heard him.

"Whatever," Felix scoffed. Just as long as the old man knew he was being ignored.

* * *

After the business with the Almyrans was done, and they were making their way back to the inn, Jeralt turned to Sylvain and said,

"Never get involved in that kind of business, kid."

Sylvain gave a confused laugh, because they were just coming off of being very much involved in some kind of business. It wasn't much more than scaring off a couple of thugs, maybe robbing them a little bit (Jeralt hung one of their daggers on his belt like a trophy), but Jeralt had also gotten a sour look on his face when he noticed the scorpion tattoo on one of their arms.

"Do as you say, not as you do?" Sylvain asked.

"Exactly. Keep your nose out of that kind of mess," Jeralt nodded.

"Kind of hypocritical," Sylvain muttered.

"Sure is," Jeralt agreed glibly. "Point still stands."

They continued walking for a while, Byleth following quietly, but Sylvain got the feeling that it wasn't just that she wasn't feeling talkative. At one point, as they were headed down one of Derdriu's narrower avenues, weaving through a crowd, Byleth gave some kind of signal, and Jeralt took a sharp turn into a nearby alley.

"Scorpion tattoo?" Jeralt asked, and it would have seemed a non-sequitur to Sylvain if the two thugs they'd just dusted up at the tinsmith's shop didn't have tattoos just like that.

Byleth nodded, looking displeased.

Jeralt gave Sylvain a look.

"That's why you don't get involved," Jeralt said, thumbing the hilt of the dagger at his belt.

* * *

Felix forgot how traveling with his father meant being surrounded by people, all the time.

The innkeepers had been all too happy to make room for Rodrigue, though when they volunteered to kick out some of the commoners to make room for Rodrigue's entire party, he had shaken his head and stated that he would sooner sleep in a hayloft than cause an innocent guest to be booted from their bed. This only made everyone in the inn look at him with that stupid expression of adoration that people seemed to get around Rodrigue all the time, and Felix redoubled his efforts to look unapproachable, lest some of that adoration spill on him as well.

The common room of the inn had filled up unexpectedly fast as Rodrigue's party sat down for dinner. It seemed every gawker in the surrounding town had come to see a duke for possibly the first time in their lives, and the innkeepers certainly weren't hurting for the unexpected boom in business. There was a din of conversation, a constant clink of cutlery.

Felix looked down at his rabbit skewers for a long time, wanting to eat but unable to, as too much of his senses were taken up by the ambient noise. He glowered at the food, instead, increasingly overwhelmed by the warmth of the common room.

"Felix." He looked up at the sound of his name to see his father looking at him from across the table. "Would you like to go upstairs to eat?"

Felix bristled, then scowled. The chair screeched as he pushed it back, and the sound was how he realized he was standing up.

"I'm fine!" he snapped, and turned to stomp upstairs.

He hadn't broken his promise to his mother, Felix thought to himself sullenly. He hadn't made a scene. If, later, an inn servant came and left the plate of rabbit skewers for him, that was just the inn being considerate to their guests, and none of his father's doing.

* * *

Jeralt downed an entire mug of ale in one long swig, then slammed the empty mug down, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Instead of returning to the inn, they were at a tavern in an entirely different part of town, but at least there was a reassuring lack of scorpion tattoos on display.

"Alright, here's what we're going to do," Jeralt began. "You know the expression 'fighting fire with fire'?"

"Boss, I feel like you're about to be a really bad role model just now," Sylvain said, as he was nursing him own mug of ale on the opposite side of the table. Byleth was making heroic advances on an entire tankard of apple cider; non-alcoholic.

"Tough shit," Jeralt retorted. "I didn't sign up to be anyone's role model. Now here's what we're going to do..."

* * *

They set off in the morning again, Felix still morose. The farther south they headed, the more snowmelt turned the roads muddy and treacherous. Their advance slowed, somewhat, out of pity for their poor horses' ankles, but they persevered. This was not the first time they traveled this particular road together, though their trips to Galatea had stopped abruptly after--

\--after Glenn's death. When there was no longer the pretext of visiting Glenn's future betrothed.

Maybe Felix should have been more considerate about visiting Ingrid, who had always been his friend more than Glenn's anyway, but the Tragedy of Duscur was like a neat slice in the course of all of Felix's relationships: easy to delineate a before and an after by that one point in time. He wasn't sure if he truly had friends anymore. He never seemed to miss Ingrid except when he was right next to her. Maybe he just missed the innocence of their previous interactions, before they had so much grief to share. He missed Dimitri sometimes, but Dimitri might as well have been dead, so he did not allow himself to feel that way for long. And Sylvain... Sylvain had been somewhere in that shuffle, once a comforting presence, but increasingly a source of annoyance as Felix found his misery too great for Sylvain's easy charm to overtake.

Another thing that had soured for Felix; he hated thinking about it, but the boredom of the road was forcing unwanted thoughts on him.

He peered at the back of his father's head for a long time, almost bored enough to attempt conversation, but not quite.

Luckily, he was saved from succumbing to that lapse in judgment by the news of bandits terrorizing the roads ahead.

"Ought to be careful, m'lord," some commoner who couldn't tell a duke from a hole in the ground advised them, "we get bandits every winter, but we had a more vicious crop of 'em this winter."

Figured, that the only thing that grew like weeds in Faerghus was the number of bandits each year, yet Felix's hand went to his hilt in excitement.

Finally, an opportunity to test out his new blade.

* * *

"What kind of underground crime lord gets the name 'Savage Mockingbird'?" Sylvain asked, not unreasonably, after the whole thing was over, and far out of the earshot of said Savage Mockingbird's people.

Byleth tilted her head curiously. "What's wrong with that name?" she asked.

" _Mockingbird_?" Sylvain's tone was incredulous, but Byleth was looking at him more blankly than usual. This was the face she made when she didn't understand something but didn't want to argue. It always made Sylvain feel like she was letting his foolishness run its course when she did that.

He turned towards Jeralt instead.

"This guy's real, right?" Sylvain asked. "We're not just, I don't know, asking some opera dilettante to take on a dangerous gang?"

"Hell if I know," Jeralt shrugged. "We're just asking them to extend their protection a bit."

"Seems kind of immoral," Sylvain pointed out reluctantly.

"How so?"

"Is it really right to ask some dangerous gang to protect the Almyran neighborhood? Won't that just bring down more trouble down on them?"

"You mean asking well-armed people with more resources at their disposal to take common folk who don't have the same ability for violence under their protection? Well, sure, there's a word for that," Jeralt said.

"Protection racket?" Sylvain suggested.

"Nobility," Jeralt replied.

"That's not--" Sylvain frowned. "It isn't the same as-- It--" His jaw worked silently for a few seconds, before Sylvain's shoulders slumped. "...Huh."

"And that's why they're called crime lords," Jeralt added mockingly.

* * *

The winter sky in Faerghus was always a stunning shade of blue. The land might well be covered in snow for seven months at length, the landscape nothing but blinding white snow and black dead wood, but that brilliant blue when the clouds cleared and the day was crisp and sunny would be the only thing reminding the people of Faerghus of the Goddess' mercy.

Felix peered into that shade of blue--Faerghus blue, a shade you didn't get anywhere else in Fodlan--and measured out his breaths evenly.

The pain in his side burned so hot it felt like it should melt the surrounding snow.

"Easy, Felix. Look at me," his father instructed, and his face blocked out Felix's view of the sky before Felix could fall into it and become lost forever. Felix felt his perspective tilt somehow, as if he had been looking down and only just now recalled that he was flat on his back looking up. His head was in his father's lap, Rodrigue's hand keeping it steady. "Breathe slowly," Rodrigue instructed. Felix could feel Rodrigue's glove on one cheek, but his bare hand on the other. He wondered nonsensically when he'd removed the glove. 

Then Felix made the mistake of looking down, and the sight of the arrow shaft jutting from his leg made him remember the pain again. He kicked his leg like a spooked horse, and Rodrigue pressed a palm against his forehead, as though willing him to be calm. Felix, for his part, was ready to kick Rodrigue next.

"I'm fine," Felix hissed through his teeth, "just take it out!"

"It will hurt," Rodrigue informed him, sounding regretful.

"It already hurts!" Felix snapped. "Take it out!"

"Your Grace, if we pull it out, he'll bleed like a stuck pig," one of the knights said--the one pressing down the wound to keep it from bleeding.

"I can heal him," Rodrigue said calmly, and already there was a buzz of white magic at his fingertips. Probably he would have done so already, except healing Felix now would close up the wound around the arrow and make it harder to extract.

"It would have to be fast," the knight said.

"Do you doubt me?" Rodrigue replied.

"No, Your Grace," the knight ducked her head. "But..."

"I won't die!" Felix's fists clenched, like he was ready to haul off and punch someone despite being skewered by an arrow at that moment. Rodrigue pushed down on his shoulders before he could rise. "I'm not dying! I refuse!" Felix shrieked. "Now pull the damn arrow out, you cowards!"

"Felix," Rodrigue said in a chiding tone, but Felix was spitting mad and not really that cowed. Maybe he was being irrational, and unnecessarily rude, but faced with the possibility of a chivalrous death while protecting the populace from bandits, bile rose to Felix's throat. He was going to live just out of spite. And where was Sylvain, anyway? Hadn't they promised to die together? So no, this was not his time, and it wouldn't be his time until he was damn well ready for it, and as far as Felix was concerned, that was that.

"Arrow's barbed. Pushing it clean through the leg would leave less damage," a second knight opined.

"Fine," Felix said. 

He should have probably been less rude to the knights, but this occurred to him only belatedly, as he watched the hand wrap around the arrow's shaft, getting ready to push it through.

It already hurt, that was true, but Felix didn't realize how much more it could hurt until the arrow was pushed clean through him. He gathered all the stubbornness inside him to stop from screaming, though his breath came out in a pained groan. He even thought he came through the experience with dignity intact.

Then Rodrigue's magic washed over him, a sudden bright, blinding glare that seared him down to his bones, and as his flesh knit back together, Felix had just enough time to roll to his side before he puked.

* * *

In Derdriu, they lost five of the company to the attrition of self-interest: three of them found better paid work with another company, one ended up in jail over his own stupidity, another one got married.

Jeralt grunted at his tavern bills, growing ever more numerous, and told everyone to get ready again.

"We're leaving by the end of the week," he said. "Pack up, tie any loose ends, eat your fill for the road."

There was a bit of grumbling, but Sylvain, for his part, was ready to be out again. As fine as this stay in Derdriu was, he felt the itch of boredom now that he had seen most of the city. There was nothing to keep him there, after all.

"We headed east?" Sylvain asked.

"Could be work for us in Edmund territory," Jeralt said. "But we'll see where the road takes us."


	10. The mortifying ordeal of not wanting to know all that stuff

Felix woke to the sounds of the inn; the crackle of a fire; a heavy blanket that provided reassuring weight even as it smothered him.

A cool hand to his forehead. Something like a memory--a sense of familiarity--a feeling of deja vu. He'd experienced something like this before, in childhood fevers.

His eyes snapped open.

"Ah, you're awake," Rodrigue said, his tone strange.

Felix batted away his father's hand like an angry cat, and kicked off the blanket. His leg gave a warning twinge, like the pull of an old scar, but there was no pain even as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

"Easy now--" Rodrigue began. His hand set on Felix's shoulder, and though Felix tried to bat it away again, his grip only tightened. Felix, assessing that he couldn't remove his father's hand without an embarrassing amount of strain, huffed and pretended he wasn't about to do that anyway.

He looked to his surroundings, instead. "Why are we back here?" he asked.

"Because you were injured," Rodrigue replied calmly.

"Well, I'm fine now!" Felix snapped. "We didn't have to turn back! I'm not a weakling!"

"I know that," Rodrigue continued, still with the same unflappable calm. That only served to make Felix angrier.

"Then why," Felix grit out, "are we back here."

"Felix," Rodrigue began, breathing in like he was about to start on a longer speech. 

But then, after a second, the breath wheezed out of him in a long exhale that seemed to leave him slumped and deflated. His hand slipped off of Felix's shoulder to fall onto his lap, half-curled and limp. Felix was so taken aback by this, he didn't even bother storming off like he'd planned.

"Felix," Rodrigue said at length, "my boy... my heart can't take it."

It was such a strange thing to hear, that Felix could only blink in response. He was halfway to wondering if his father was referencing some heart disease before having to contend with the notion that this was some kind of--much more distressing--feelings thing he was referencing.

Felix felt himself not only speechless, but locked in place, unable to move in the face of this unfamiliar situation. He liked to believe he had taken his measure of Rodrigue and found him to be utterly beneath his contempt, that he had killed any love he'd once had for his father the moment he'd uttered those horrible things about Glenn's death, but suddenly, horrifyingly, Felix found himself realizing that it mattered to him. It mattered what his father felt and thought, in ways Felix had tried for two years to excise. He stayed quiet and listened, even as it frightened him to think what he might learn.

"Easier for you, I think, to run into danger, than for me to bear it if anything should happen to you," Rodrigue spoke, his voice soft and slow, like he was extracting words from his stream of consciousness. His gaze had fallen to his own hands, thumb rubbing distractedly against his palm, but he was had a faraway look in his eyes. "Easiest thing in the world to die, and not so easy for those left behind to live with it. Felix... my dear son... you're not like Glenn at all, are you? Yet here you are, doing the same thing. Running towards death with no fear."

Felix's heart thundered in his chest, and a hot knot of tears formed in his throat. He didn't understand all these feelings spilling over from his father, but he still felt crushed under the knowledge of their existence.

"I had to contemplate the words I would tell your mother if you died," Rodrigue continued, face twisting with displeasure. "No doubt you'd have taken exception to them, even if you weren't there to hear. But you are not dead. So I had to think of what to tell a living son instead. It is a hideous thing, how much harder that was. How words for the dead came more easily than words for the living."

Rodrigue leaned forward, catching Felix's gaze and peering at him with an intensity that burned. He put his hand to the back of Felix's neck, like pinning him in place, though Felix did not even have the wherewithal to move at that moment.

"So I will tell you this, Felix." Rodrigue's voice was like steel as he enunciated each word clearly: "Do not die."

For once, Felix's tongue did not feel so sharp, and his father did not seem like the useless old man who'd take all of his insults in stride. This was a serious conversation taking place, and Felix felt, for the first time in his life, that it was something he was meant to take seriously. This was the turning point past which Felix would no longer be the coddled baby of the family, that failing to rise to expectations would not be some mere act of defiance, but a clear mark against Felix's character.

"Okay," Felix warbled in response.

His lack of eloquence went unremarked, as Rodrigue nodded in acknowledgement and released him.

As Rodrigue leaned back in his chair, his strange mood seemed almost completely dissipated.

"Do you want something to eat? Are you hungry?" Rodrigue asked, the question strangely mundane after the emotional high-wire of his monologue just before.

"No," Felix replied automatically. Then, "Rabbit meat, maybe."

Rodrigue smiled, and went to check if the inn had any prepared.

* * *

Following the conversation, Rodrigue seemed all the way back to his normal self, charming the commoners and chit-chatting with the knights in his guard.

On the other hand, Felix felt like he'd passed through to some much stranger world. Maybe he was really dead. Maybe those bandits had killed him. Now he was in this purgatory where he had to live with the knowledge that his father had... human feelings and experiences and... loved him. Or something.

The knowledge left Felix feeling shaky and strange in his own skin. Maybe if Sylvain had been around, he'd have one of his weirdly accurate insights to share about this situation. But Felix felt replete with insight; he hadn't been prepared to confront the notion that his father had an internal life as real and deep as Felix's own, and that he had been affected just as profoundly by Glenn's death. Why hadn't he shown it? Why did he show it now?

Felix turned it all over and over in his head. And though Rodrigue's behavior seemed just the same, Felix found himself relenting, by the smallest degrees that his pride allowed. He didn't snap at his father as often. He sat besides him at the campfire, even if he didn't say much when he did, and even if he felt awkward whenever he did have something to say at all.

Rodrigue made no gesture to show he had noticed the difference in Felix's behavior, except once in a while he would look to Felix with a much too gentle expression on his face, and Felix's shoulders would rise high around his ears, and he'd mutter a sharp 'shut up!' even when Rodrigue hadn't said anything to begin with.

But the group carried on, following the road to Derdriu. It wouldn't be the last misadventure they would experience, the road being filled with bandits, natural disaster, and beasts of all kind. But all things considered, they thought they'd made good time anyway.

It was only after a month of fruitless investigation that they would realize they had missed Sylvain completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, this was a hard scene to write, but it's done. It's out there. I don't need to pick at it anymore. (*blows on party popper: FWEE*)


	11. You can't go on a downward spiral if you come full circle

It was a long shot that they were going to find Sylvain, but Felix took his own failure personally anyway. In his deepest heart, he couldn't let go of feeling as though he had to persevere, like one of the characters from the tales his brother used to read him: the ones who prevailed through willpower alone.

What a ridiculous notion.

Still, tempered by his failure, Felix came back from the trip... adrift. Softer along the edges, maybe, for how he no longer snapped at his father as much, and how, when he did, it felt perfunctory, like the inertia of their previous rapport.

His mother gave him knowing looks after his return, warm and proud in ways that made his skin itch with embarrassment, because it felt like he hadn't earned it; he had failed.

Yet, swallowing his own failure had also made him permissive of others'.

At his father's gentle encouragement--Felix hesitated to use the word 'persuasion', because he did not like to think of himself as particularly persuadable by his father--he began visiting Fhirdiad with more frequency, as he had before the Tragedy of Duscur. Perhaps the old man saw this as a kind of healing, but nothing was ever going to fix what had broken between Felix and Dimitri. Felix was convinced of it.

But, for the sake of a friend that was not there, Felix would learn to tolerate Dimitri's presence, and his newly-acquired Duscur shadow. He would learn to swallow back his harsh words, and sit in Dimitri's presence even as it made his stomach roil. And, after a while, Felix found himself growing used to it--used to this new Dimitri, who wore the mask of the old one. He never once forgot who Dimitri truly was, when you scratched the surface, but he could bear it. He stopped believing he'd ever understood what or who Dimitri ever was; having glimpsed unknown parts of Rodrigue, now Felix couldn't help but look for the strange undercurrents in everyone else.

Once, when alone in a room with Dedue, Felix had sneered some question to him, regarding whether Dedue even realized what Dimitri even was. He couldn't remember his own words exactly, only that Dedue had looked Felix in the eye for the first time ever, pinning him with that serene gaze, and he replied, 'I have always known.' The words seared into Felix's mind, alongside the unsettling realization that Dedue had not merely seen Dimitri's undercurrents, but had been navigating them since the first day they'd met.

It was times like that when Felix wondered why he didn't just give up on Dimitri instead. Dedue could have him; Dedue could put up with him. But then, each time, he realized that the real glue between them had become Sylvain's disappearance, which their conversations inevitably gravitated towards, like they were obsessively picking at a scab.

That was the strangeness of it, Felix supposed. When Glenn had died, everyone turned their eyes on Felix and began drawing parallels. They had all grieved. They had all seen it ripple through their lives in unexpected ways. Yet, Sylvain's disappearance had not borne even the faintest acknowledgment. They spoke around it, alluded, ignored it, treated it like a temporary thing, and a year passed over it with not a change, until it became the new normal. A year and a half. Nearly two. The Margrave's anger had simmered to a sullen resentment, and Miklan strutted about the place smugly, crowing about his newest marriage prospects like he was assessing cattle breeding stock instead of wives.

Even Ingrid began to stop wondering where Sylvain might be, in favor of merely commenting that she hoped his life was better spent wherever he had ended up. The way she said it indicated that she sooner thought he was dead in a ditch by now, but she never spoke this out loud.

It felt like an injustice to Felix, on some visceral level, but he couldn't quite explain why. Sylvain may well have been happier far away from his father's reach. Ingrid might be correct, that his life might be better spent wherever he ended up. But she had given up on him, all the same.

So, tragically, the only other one who seemed to understand that same ineffable unfairness to Sylvain's disappearance ended up being Dimitri.

"Do you remember," Dimitri asked once, when they were alone (save for Dedue, who was always, silently, there), "Sylvain's last birthday before he left?"

"There was a celebration," Felix groused in response.

"Yes, his birthday celebration," Dimitri agreed. "Do you recall it?"

Felix dredged his memories, but naturally he could not, because he hadn't been invited to it.

"It was boring," Felix opined. "Only his father's noble friends were invited. My father went."

"Yes," Dimitri agreed, in that mild way of his that Felix knew his a burning rage. "Only his father's friends. To Sylvain's birthday party."

He hadn't thought it through at the time, because Sylvain had always been the eldest in their friend group, closer in age to Glenn than themselves. It had seemed natural, at the time, that Sylvain would have a grown-up party that only adults would be invited to.

Dimitri was seventeen now, and he had not been denied his friends' presence at his own birthday celebration. The difference that two years made granted perspective, and as much as they turned over and over in their heads all the words Sylvain had ever said to them for some clue of what he had been planning, Felix had never stopped to consider that perhaps the real answer was that it had been an impulsive thing that Sylvain had done, and that his provocation had come not from any of his friends, but from his family. From his life. From his circumstances.

What had the Gautiers even gained from that celebration? A bit of clout? Impressing their friends? Trotting out Sylvain to impress them all with their Crested son and his impeccable pedigree?

"Better he left, then," Felix muttered darkly. Dimitri understood, even if he disagreed.

* * *

When it happened, Felix could have almost smacked himself for how long it took.

Some things, he couldn't be blamed for missing. When he overheard the Professor and Jeralt speaking of handing over the day-to-day operation of their mercenary company over to 'Jose', Felix hadn't even registered that that was Sylvain's middle name. There were plenty of Jose running about Fodlan. It hadn't even stirred a pang in Felix, because Sylvain had never once in his life gone by his middle name.

Even when Felix glimpsed a head of red among Jeralt's mercenaries, he could be forgiven for not looking much closer; there were also plenty of redheads in Fodlan, and Felix was too old to be chasing them all down in case one of them happened to be the correct one.

But when it happened, it was just happenstance, just coincidence, just accident--in a way that could have happened at any point over the three months that Byleth had been their professor.

They were on a mission to clear out some mountain passes of bandits, and they were camped in the woods, the students' tents ringed by the mercenaries' in a protective circle. Felix went to search for the Professor for a sparring match before winding down for the night. 

He found her speaking with one of the mercenaries in her father's company, a man with red hair, and when he turned around, Felix stopped dead in his tracks, and so did the man.

Rough stubble had grown in an approximation of a beard, despite a scar intersecting his jawline, starting from under his cheek. And his messy hair, always artfully tousled, looked more grown wild and pulled back in a messy queue. But the eyes--the eyes couldn't be disguised.

"Felix. Hi," he said, like he'd just run into Felix during a casual stroll in the garden, instead of having gone missing for two years. "How have you been?" he continued, rubbing the back of his neck, a bit wary, a bit awkward, but not anywhere close to sorry enough.

And so Felix lunged. His sword--the wretched, precious sword Sylvain had once sent him for his birthday--clattered to the dirt, and Felix swung his fists madly. He wasn't sure what he intended; to scratch? To bite, like some wild animal? But hand-to-hand combat had never truly been his strong point, and Sylvain had somehow grown both taller and wider since they last crossed paths.

In a move that hadn't been used on Felix since he'd been a small child trying to roughhouse with his brother, Sylvain grabbed his arms, swung him around, and pulled them crossed, holding Felix tightly with his back against Sylvain's chest. Felix spat incoherent rage and tried to kick Sylvain, like he was six years old again.

The Professor watched all this with that same impassive face of hers, apparently not very alarmed that one of her students would attack one of her fellow mercenaries.

"You two know each other?" she asked conversationally, and her flatly unimpressed stare had Felix pausing in his struggling.

"You could say that, yeah," Sylvain laughed. It was a deep, warm sound, and as Felix felt the rumble of it against his back, he could feel how much more sincere it was than his old laughter, the fake chuckles and sharp smiles he'd always worn.

The rest of the fight seeped out of Felix then, and all he had was a question, warbling from his throat from unshed tears, "How could you?"

There was a pause, a moment of quiet guilt, and then Sylvain released Felix slowly, letting him totter to his feet unsteadily.

"Sorry," Sylvain said then, voice soft. "I--just... sorry."

Not the smooth talker he used to be, if that was all he could muster, but Felix was equally bereft of words. He shook his head, turned around to skewer Sylvain with a look.

"Tell me where you've been," Felix all but commanded.

Sylvain's lips pressed together in a flat, dismayed line, but he nodded.

* * *

The details of Sylvain's life in the two years since running away were just the minutia of mercenary life: Sylvain had fallen in with Jeralt's company mere weeks after his disappearance.

But it was everything else that they needed to talk about. Sylvain hadn't revealed to Byleth or Jeralt his identity, or even his real name, but the fact that the Eisners hadn't known about the Gautier heir in their midst didn't make Felix feel all that better. He'd been hiding it just to continue shirking on his duties.

"Duties?" Sylvain laughed, too close to his old laugh. "Miklan can have those. It's what he always wanted, anyway."

But when Felix turned wide, worried eyes on Sylvain, the smile slipped off his face.

"What?" he asked.

"Your father's dying, you know," Felix pointed out.

Sylvain shook his head--not that he was denying, but that he was rejecting any responsibility.

"The healers told him he was at risk for apoplexy after you left," Felix persisted. "They told him if he wasn't going to keep calm, he would have a stroke one day. And he's never calm when Miklan is around. I don't know what he's always whispering into your father's ear, but one of these days, he's going to push the old man into a fit that finally kills him. And if you're not back by then, Miklan will be heir. We can't afford a war with Sreng, Sylvain. Stop shaking your head and listen."

"I'm listening, I just don't care," Sylvain snapped.

Before Felix could reply, Sylvain jumped to his feet. The log stool he'd been sitting on fell over at the forceful motion, and Sylvain walked away several steps, off into the trees, as he ran hands through his hair.

Felix sat by the fire. Night had fallen in the time it took for them to speak, and he couldn't peer into the darkness to see where Sylvain had gone to, but he didn't follow. If Sylvain was going to spend the rest of his life running away, it was not Felix's job to follow. He already had his hands full with the boar.

But Sylvain, just like he didn't years ago, came back. He walked back into the circle of firelight with a tired look on his face, and sat next to the Professor, who'd been quietly observing this entire time. She still did not say anything, like she was more spectator than participant.

"If I go back," Syvlain said, "Miklan won't just step aside."

"No," Felix agreed, "he won't."

Sylvain sat back down by the fire, not saying another word. It was not acquiescence. It was not even resignation.

* * *

Dimitri did not find out about Sylvain until morning. He did have the tendency to wake at the crack of dawn, more out of some rigid self-discipline than natural inclination, and at least with nobody else awake, it was not difficult to sneak Sylvain over to the tent that Dimitri shared with Dedue. With three large men inside, it did get crowded, however, so Felix stood outside, keeping watch. Dedue joined him outside, though the way he inclined his head, it was clear he was listening tensely for any sign that he would need to intervene.

Through the open sliver of the tent door, Felix saw Dimitri pull Sylvain into a hug, tight enough to have Sylvain wheezing. But when Dimitri pulled back, he had his scolding face on.

"I am grateful you are safe and hale, but you caused us a great deal of worry, Sylvain," Dimitri said. He didn't raised his voice, but his tone was stern.

"What? Worried about little old me?" Sylvain said, and Felix could hear the shape of his grin in his tone of voice. "Nah, I was fine. How did you all do without me? Better than ever, huh?"

"Sylvain!"

There were a few moments of silence. Dedue had relaxed his stance, and pulled the tent door closed properly. The voices were more muffled through the canvas, and Felix could no longer see inside. But if he listened intently enough, he could hear the words.

"Sylvain, you must come home," Dimitri pleaded. 

Felix's stomach swooped at the words: the very plea he would have wanted to make, but that he was to proud to utter aloud. Dimitri had no such compunctions.

"You don't know what's home to me," Sylvain replied.

Felix's hand tightened on the pommel of his sword.

"We ought to leave them to it," Dedue said softly.

Felix just grunted in acknowledgment, but followed Dedue to scrounge for breakfast.

* * *

They pulled Ingrid aside, a bit of distance from camp, just after breakfast. It was a good decision in the end, because she came very close to shrieking when Sylvain stepped out from behind a tree and greeted her casually.

"And just where have you been?" Ingrid demanded, gathering herself up the way she did before she delivered a lecture.

"I'll tell you when you're older," Sylvain said, and nearly got himself slapped for it.

But no lecture followed. She squeezed him in a hug even tighter than Dimitri's. It was almost like an apology, though there was no way he'd know she'd given up on him.

* * *

It was only at the end of the mission, the evening before they headed back to the monastery, that Dedue found himself alone with Sylvain. To avoid giving any awkward explanations, Sylvain didn't join the students around their campfire. But neither did he return to the mercenaries' own camp. He lingered at the edges, instead, and Dedue crossed paths with him when he went down to the stream to wash his hands after dinner.

"The thirty-first of Verdant Rain Moon," Dedue told him.

"...What?" Sylvain's head jerked around, surprised by Dedue's presence. Dedue would have thought his sheer size made him quite easy to spot, but he had also always had a light step.

"You sent me birthday presents, alongside Dimitri's," Dedue said, "because you never knew my birthday but did not wish for me to be left out. I thank you. My birthday is on the thirty-first of Verdant Rain Moon. I would appreciate the opportunity to give you a present for your next birthday in return."

Gardland Moon had passed, so Sylvain's birthday was nearly a year off, but Sylvain must have caught the suggestion that he would need to be around for Dedue to give him a birthday present.

"We'll see," Sylvain said, before turning back to look at his friends around the campfire.

* * *

When Sylvain came to a decision, he did not tell anyone in advance.

But they knew, when Sylvain showed up armored and clean-shaven, looking very much like a Gautier and much less like a mercenary, that he had made his decision. He stood next to Professor Byleth as she explained their mission for the month. 

Miklan Anschutz Gautier had been amassing a small private army, more blackguards and bandits than proper soldiers, within Gautier lands. Though he had not attacked any of the neighboring territories, his actions were suspicious, and making his neighbors nervous. To avoid starting a conflict between different Faerghan noble houses, or worse yet, between House Gautier and the throne, they were to help the rightful Gautier heir eliminate Miklan and take his proper place.

A simple enough task, and Sylvain very much looked the part of the prodigal son returning into the fold; he carried himself with confidence, like a man experienced with battle, and his smiles were as charming as ever.

If anyone could see any sign of resignation in him, they did not remark on it. He looked more ready than any of Blue Lion students would have been to confront their own kin on the battlefield.

But later, when Professor Byleth quietly asked him if he was ready, Sylvain laughed softly, and shook his head.

"Maybe ready isn't the word for it," he said, rueful, "but it feels like it's time I stopped running."


End file.
